Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn
by andrewjameswilliams
Summary: Janus unhappy with how things are being handled in Sunnydale and elsewhere by the Powers That Be decides to intervene and in so doing changes the destiny and fate of an entire planet forever. *Discontinued, full rewrite in progress*
1. Chapter 1

**Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn**

**Authors Note: This story is a response to Zaion's ship of the line challenge on Twisting the Hellmouth. I've been playing with a few different ideas on how to respond ever since the challenge was first posted but decided that this was probably my best option.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around with for my own purposes and make no profit from their use. So please no one sue me.**

* * *

**Chapter One**

**Somewhere**

**Sometime**

The being known as Janus frowned as he stood over his viewing pool watching events playing out in the mortal world. While his kind had little influence on the events taking place in the mortal realms these days, the result of a decree by the Creator brought about after they'd abused their powers one too many times, they could still look in on them. Which was precisely what he was doing now.

And he _really_ didn't like what he was seeing.

The Powers That Be and the Ascended were really making a mess of things; the Powers especially with that ridiculous idea they had for a balance between the forces of good and evil. The latter with their complete lack of interest in anything that went on with those they regarded as 'lower' beings, too afraid to act less they become as addicted to power as their Ori cousins had. Being the Roman god of time as well as doorways and change he could see which way things were going for the people of Earth under both their stewardship.

It wasn't good.

The Powers had their mortal champions locked in an endless battle against the supernatural, a battle that if things didn't change soon could have very dire consequences. He could already see the destruction of The Seed of Wonder and with it the temporary end of all forms of magic on the horizon – the tau lines were clear that that was a very probable future – which would be a bad thing. Though their rational minds didn't yet understand or accept it humans needed magic if they were to one day reach their full potential as a species and rise beyond simple ascension to energy beings – a potential his kind had nurtured since before the second iteration of the human race began recording time.

Thinking about it he wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the Powers plan as they'd long hated humanities potential for magic – a potential the Alterans before them had never had – as it could eventually lead to them – and their precious balance – being rendered basically redundant. Plus the end of magic – at least for awhile as the Seed of Wonder would eventually regenerate itself – would let them do away with those other higher beings like the Elders, the Angels of Destiny and the Avatars who they saw as competitors, allowing the Powers to become even more powerful and domineering over the future of humanities destiny.

And if that wasn't bad enough the faction of humans known as Americans had reopened a door that would have been better left closed. Now they were out amid the stars far sooner than they ever should have been, facing threats that they weren't yet ready or even properly equipped to fight. Though they did not know it yet the Goa'uld System Lords were a minor threat compared to some of the things that prowled the universe. Any one of which could wipe out all life on Earth with no effort at all. While there were some who wanted to close the Stargate – though for hardly altruistic reasons as the true motivations of people like Senator Kinsey were an open book to him – it was already too late for that.

He was already aware that the System Lord Apophis was gathering his finest Jaffa army on two warships with which to attack and reconquer Earth. While he could see they'd repel the assault this time, and eventually make a peaceful contact with the powerful but steadily fading Asgard gaining a measure of protection against the egotistical, megalomaniacal parasites, it would only be a short term respite. Eventually they'd clash first with the Ori and then other higher dimensional threats and without magic, or some other advantage, they would ultimately fall no matter how hard they fought.

The problem was what he could do about it. How could he shake things up and hopefully make the events to come turn out differently? There wasn't much; like all the Old Gods he had little ability to affect the mortal world at all anymore. Certainly he couldn't just change things at his whim in the way he and the others had once been able to, which he had to admit had gone to their heads more than once and in the end prompted the Creator to step in and issue the decree to stop there interference.

It presented him with quite the conundrum.

After a couple of minutes thought a possible solution occurred to him. The Creators Edict wasn't absolute; the Creator hadn't been so cruel as to cut him and the others off entirely from the mortal realms, there was a way he could intervene. The fact that doing so could cause those over officious Powers That Be to have the celestial equivalent of a heart attack would just be, to borrow a delightful mortal phrase, icing on the cake.

His solution was simple.

In just under four hours – as humans reckoned time – it would be All Hallows Eve. Janus was fully aware that one of his few remaining mortal followers had travelled to the most active Hellmouth on Earth; his intent to cause chaos on Halloween night using enchanted costumes. Ethan Rayne had been a useful servant in the past, even if he did like the chaotic aspects of his power more than any of the other divine magic's that he could command. And now he would use that to his advantage as it would be easy to hijack Ethan's spell and repurpose at least part of it to accomplish his goal. He would have to be careful of course and make the change look to be a natural side effect of the chaos magic, so the Powers wouldn't be able to scream fowl, but it was doable. The repurposing of the spell would hurt Ethan a bit but that would be a small price to pay, and besides it would let him teach the chaos mage an important lesson, the lesson that he was primarily a god of change with chaos being only a small part of his aspect.

With the basics of a plan now in mind Janus waved a hand over the surface of the viewing pool, causing the image to change to show both Ethan Rayne's little shop and everything around it. _Now who to use,_ he thought gazing thoughtfully at the throng of young humans coming and going from the shop, determining just who he would use to hopefully change upcoming events for the better.

After a few moments of searching he spotted them.

One of the two current vampire slayers, Buffy Summers, the still unknowing witch Willow Rosenberg (he quickly made a mental note to have a word with the Elders about her, see if they could assign a whitelighter to assist her in learning magic properly as the girl was a powerhouse, and thus potentially the founding member of an entirely new magical bloodline, though she didn't know it yet) and his current favourite mortal, Alexander 'Xander' Harris. _Perfect,_ he thought smiling with both his faces at Alexander. That young man had been quite the topic of conversation amongst the various pantheons since the moment he'd successfully defied prophecy. Since then he'd kept a very close eye on him and directly intervened on his behalf when the Powers had wanted to punish him for disrupting their plans and thwarting one of their prophecies. In so doing by the ancient laws that bound celestial beings of all kinds, laws laid down by the Creator at the very beginning of the universe itself, he'd claimed him as a champion. And he was perfect for his purposes.

_Now just a few things to arrange,_ he thought as he extended a small tendril of power to adjust some events that were to take place inside Ethan's shop. The first change he made was making the noble woman dress the Slayer would have been originally drawn to subtly undesirable to her. At the same time he made someone else get the last toy gun in the shop which would force his champion to find something else, something that he would be really able to work with. With a final little tweak he pulled back and watched to see what happened next.

* * *

**Ethan's Costume Shop**

**Sunnydale, That Same Time**

Alexander 'Xander' Harris resisted, just, the impulse to swear as he noticed that all the toy guns had vanished from the shelves. There went his plan for a two dollar costume using Uncle Rory's old army combat fatigues. _Just my luck,_ he thought with a sigh.

"Something wrong, Xander," Buffy asked looking over at her best male friend.

"It's nothing, Buff," Xander answered, "it was just I was hoping to get away with not having to spend a lot as I already had a costume lined up for tonight. All I needed was one bit from here but now…"

"…it's gone," Buffy finished for him prompting an affirming nod.

"Yup now I have to find something else," Xander replied.

"Hmm well thanks to that troll, Snyder I also need to find something," Buffy commented, "maybe we can have a look together. And maybe together we can both convince Willow to wear something other than a ghost costume."

Xander snorted. "Buffy we're more likely to get pigs to fly than succeed in that," he pointed out, "both myself and Jesse – rest his soul – tried for years but in the end we ended up giving up."

Buffy inwardly winced when Xander mentioned his lost friend. She still felt guilty that she hadn't been able to prevent Jesse being turned as it was her own damned fault. She'd been so busy trying to escape her destiny as a Slayer at the time that she'd failed him, failed Willow and failed Xander who'd been forced to drive a stake into the heart of the monster who'd worn his friends face. Despite the blond-bimbo mask she sometimes wore she knew Xander was – to this day – haunted by Jesse's fate. And that it was one the things that drove him to fight the darkness, so no one else would know that pain, even though he had nothing really in the way of formal combat training.

Which now she thought about it she should really do something about. She made a mental note to have a word with Giles about it later, see if she and the Watcher couldn't come up with some sort of training regime for Xander and Willow. After all it would tear her apart if one of them were to be killed due to lack of training or worse turned, forcing her to slay them. So far they'd been lucky but no luck could last forever. She mentally kicked herself for what now seemed like such an obvious, and unforgiveable, oversight on her part. Xander and Willow would get some training even if she had to train them herself.

A hand suddenly waving in front of her face brought her out of her thoughts and she jumped. "Sorry I was miles away," she admitted smiling sheepishly at Xander.

"Anything we need to be worried about?"

Realising that he was worried that she'd just had one of her Slayer Dreams/Visions warning of some new big bad on the horizon she was quick to reassure him. "Nah I just realised something though we'll talk about it later," she said firmly wanting to talk to Giles before she broke the idea of training with Xander and Willow. "So Willow won't wear anything other than a ghost costume?"

"Nope though if you want to try your welcome to," Xander answered, "hell you might have more luck with her than we ever did since you're a girl as well."

"I'll go have a word with her," Buffy decided. "Will you be alright searching for a costume?"

"I'll be fine go speak to Willow," Xander replied, gaining a nod from the Slayer before she wandered off in search of the quiet, meek redhead. Xander watched her wistfully, wishing he could have her as a girlfriend, even after what she'd done to him at the Bronze. But she was with Angel now, a thought that made him shiver in distaste. What Buffy saw in Angel he really didn't know, after all cursed with a human soul or not the man wasn't really a man but a vampire and always would be. _I do wish she'd stake his ass and be done with it,_ he thought, _but now she carries on a relationship with the walking corpse. Which just proves one thing, girls are weird._

Putting Buffy's distasteful relationship with Angel out of his mind he turned to the serious purpose of finding a suitable costume for tomorrow night. He began looking through the various costumes on offer. There were a few costumes from DC comics present but unfortunately none of them were in his size which was a pity as it would have been cool to dress up as Batman, Superman or even Green Lantern for the night. With a sigh of resignation he moved on to the next rack of costumes.

There was no help here either. All the costumes were of the traditional Halloween variety, all ghosts, ghouls, witches, werewolves and vampires. While he might have considered wearing one of them in the past, now that he knew the truth of the supernatural world he wasn't about to touch any of them. Not even with a ten foot barge pole – even though a few looked to be in his size. So he moved on again.

And immediately paused for a moment in shock as he saw the contents of the next rack. The costumes were from a certain anime series he, Willow and Jesse used to watch when they'd been kids. Some of the costumes looked a bit newer, a bit more with a modern take but they were clearly all Robotech costumes. Grinning slightly he began looking through them, searching for one that was both for a male and in his size. One particular costume caught his eye and he carefully lifted it out, it was a white and red officers uniform with a high collared black jacket-like cloak over the top. He immediately recognised it as the uniform Rick Hunter had been wearing as one of the senior officers attached to the SDF3 for the Pioneer mission in the aborted Robotech II: Sentinels series. A small bag was attached containing a large black wig and a few other accessories including a replica of a SAL-9 Laser Pistol.

_Whoa who ever put this together obviously paid a lot of attention to detail. Which means its probably out of range of what I can afford,_ he thought before checking the price tag. And freezing in shock before checking again to make sure he wasn't imagining things. The entire get up was only fifteen dollars well within the range of what he could afford. A smug grin appeared on his face as he decided then and there that this would be his costume tonight.

"Found something Xander," Buffy suddenly asked from behind him, making him yelp slightly in surprise before spinning around to find Buffy and a dejected looking Willow standing there. Neither of whom had costumes yet.

"Don't do that," he replied, giving the blond haired Slayer a death glare for trying to give him a heart attack. Buffy winced and mouthed 'sorry' back, so he let her off the hook this time at least. "And yeah I have," he added holding up the uniform for his two female friends to see.

"No way," Willow exclaimed eyes widening as she recognised the uniform even though she hadn't quite been as into Robotech as Xander and Jesse had been. "I didn't realise they did Robotech costumes for Halloween."

"Ugh what's Robotech," Buffy asked and winced at the scandalised looks she got back off Xander and Willow.

After a few moments of stunned silence that she didn't know Xander decided to enlighten her. "Robotech was a 80's anime Buffy," he explained, "in which three different generations of people fought off repeated waves of alien invaders all after a special ultra-clean power source called protoculture."

"Oh," Buffy replied. "Well it's a very nice uniform, Xander. I'm glad one of us is having luck finding something to wear, nothing I've seen so far really catches my interest."

"They don't have any ghost costumes, Xander," Willow griped to her oldest friend – and not so secret crush.

Xander chuckled. "Well then," he said a slight smirk appearing on his face even as he mentally thanked whoever was in charge for making sure Willow wouldn't be able to dress up as a ghost this time. "Looks like you won't be able to dress up as a ghost for a change, Wills. There are plenty of other costumes in this rack why don't you guys take a look?"

"I suppose it couldn't hurt," Buffy admitted, "come on Willow."

"Alright," Willow replied, still deeply unhappy about having to find something else to wear instead of her traditional ghost costume. Still if she had to wear a costume it would be nice if it was from one of hers, Xander's and Jesse's favourite childhood shows. It would be a nice way to honour Jesse, who'd been gone nearly a year now, and maybe, just maybe, it would get Xander to notice her more as a woman.

"Great," Xander answered. "I'll go pay for this then meet you girls outside, deal?"

"Deal," Buffy and Willow agreed, speaking almost in unison. Xander grinned back before heading over with his costume to pay while his two fellow Scoobies resumed their search for costumes. _Maybe, _Xander thought as he arrived at the back of checkout queue, _despite Snyder's best efforts tonight won't be so bad after all._

* * *

**Summers Residence**

**A Short Time Later**

"So where are you meeting, Angel?"

Buffy smiled slightly at Willow's question even as she finished putting the final touches on the costume she'd acquired from Ethan's. Like Xander and Willow she'd been able to acquire the costume from the stock of Robotech costumes and, while she had no real idea just who the character Admiral Lisa Hayes was, she had to admit it looked good on her.

"Here after trick-or-treating moms going to be out so we'll have the house to ourselves," she replied before looking at the bathroom door. "Okay, Willow come on out. You can't hide in their all night."

"O…okay but promise you won't laugh?" Willow stammered back, her voice thick with nerves at being seen wearing what she was wearing. Buffy resisted, just, the impulse to roll her eyes not for the first time wondering just how Willow hoped to get Xander to notice her developing womanhood if she was nervous about appearing in anything remotely sexy.

"I promise," she assured the red head.

Slowly, nervously, the door opened and Willow – her very demeanour screaming meek, little mouse instead of the attractive woman she was maturing into – stepped out. She was dressed in a near strapless pale sky blue dress that hung down from an equally light blue chocker she wore around her neck. The dress hugged the contours of her body and showed off well the willowy figure was really starting to develop. The dress was open at the sides from her feet to just below her hips, showing surprisingly well proportioned legs. A translucent white silk mesh worn over her shoulders, white stiletto shoes and elbow length white gloves completed the ensemble. On her head in place of her normal red hair, Willow – like Buffy herself – was wearing a wig, though hers was black unlike the hazel brown of the one she was wearing – that framed her face and cascaded over her shoulders. _Wow,_ Buffy thought, _she dresses up nice. This Lynn Minmei character obviously knew how to dress to impress. Now if only I could convince her to dress up like this more often, she'd be giving Cordelia a run for her money in the attracting boys department._

"Wow," she said with a smile. "Willow you look a dish."

Willow frowned. "No I don't I look terrible," she replied looking down. "I wish they'd had a ghost costume I could have worn."

Buffy sighed. "Willow…" she started to admonish her friend for being so negative about her own appearance, but before any sound could emerge from her lips the doorbell sounded. "That will be, Xander. Cheer up, Wills you'll be fine. Trust me you'll blow, Xander away."

With that she turned and started to head downstairs to let their Xander-shaped friend in. Willow sighed and watched the Slayer leave, filling out the Sentinel's era uniform she was wearing very well indeed. She wished she could believe Buffy that this get up would really blow Xander away, and get him to notice her as a woman, but she wasn't at all sure that it would. But since Ethan's had lacked ghost costumes, the rack where they would have been having been empty indicating they'd probably already been sold out, she had no choice but to wear this get up. Mentally she tried to picture herself more as Minmei – as Minmei had been her favourite character in the Macross Saga though there had been a few times when she'd despaired at Minmei's seeming ignorance of Rick's attraction to her – than as herself. After all as Buffy had pointed out earlier Halloween was about pretending to be someone else.

It helped somewhat.

* * *

Reaching the bottom of the stairs Buffy sighed to herself. She so wished Willow wasn't so negative about her appearance all the time, wasn't so lacking in self-confidence. Though the latter was hardly a new thing for Willow, at least according to Xander, as despite her very high intelligence – or possibly because of it – Willow had lacked self-confidence for years. Though Xander had also said she'd gotten better recently, ever since they started helping her with her calling. _Maybe the training I'll give them both will help,_ she thought making another mental note to discuss the issue of getting her friends some defence training with Giles later.

Reaching the door she pushed those thoughts aside for now and opened it to let Xander in. "Admiral Hunter reporting for duty," Xander joked as he came in, prompting Buffy to blink as she saw him actually in the uniform he'd picked up. She had to admit he looked good in it, better than good in fact he looked well… hot in uniform. Though where had he acquired blue tinted contact lenses? She didn't remember seeing any in the accessory pack that came with the uniform. "Whoa, Buffy you look good," Xander commented. "You pull off Lisa well."

Buffy smiled. "Why thank you kind sir," she replied smirking as she shut the door. "Now just wait till you see, Willow," she added moving to the base of the stairs. "Come on, Willow come down."

"B…but," Willow yelled back.

"Wills if you don't come down we're going to be late," Buffy shot back, "you want Snyder to give us detention for a month?"

For a few moments there was silence, and Buffy began to fear that Willow would indeed chicken out of coming down, then Willow appeared at the top to the stairs and slightly unsteady in her stiletto shoes began descending. Buffy watched cautiously, knowing this was Willow's first time in stiletto's and knowing from her own experience that it was easy to fall in them, at least till you got used to wearing them.

The moment Willow reached the bottom of the stairs Xander blinked. _Wow, Willow is getting hot,_ he thought, _not that I'll ever date her, would be too much like trying to date a sister._ He of course recognised the outfit as being the one Lynn Minmei had worn during Robotech II: The Sentinels when she'd attended the wedding of Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes. "Wow Willow you look great," he said smiling.

Willow blushed slightly. "Ugh thanks, Xander," she replied, inwardly dancing in victory as she saw the look that briefly came into his eyes. Eyes that she suddenly noticed were not their normal colour. "You don't look so bad yourself. But what's with the blue eyes contacts?"

"Yup, the shop owner had them behind the counter for two dollars so I snapped them up. Think it really makes me look the part don't you?"

"It does," Willow agreed. "But we should get going."

"True we don't want to give the troll an excuse to chuck us all in detention," Xander agreed. "Though what he's got against the three of us I really don't know."

"Wish I knew," Buffy agreed as she picked up her house keys from a side table and slipped them into the pocket of her uniform, "maybe he's just mean. Come on times a wasting."

Xander and Willow both nodded in agreement. Being closest to the door Xander opened it and gestured for the girls to go first, then he followed them out making sure to close the door behind him. Then without further comment the three friends began making their way towards Sunnydale High School to pick up their charges for the evening.

* * *

**Back of Ethan's Shop**

**Two Hours Later**

Ethan Rayne smiled as he observed dusk give way to the deep darkness of a moonless night. After all his preparation it was time to begin the complex incantations that would summon the power of Janus and allow chaos to reign over Sunnydale. Quickly he closed the curtains over the back window and began carefully lighting the black candles around the room and the idol of Janus.

Once that was accomplished he knelt before the shrine and produced a small athame, the double edged steel knife engraved with a variety of mystical symbols, from his pocket and held the blade between his hands. Calmly he pressed both palms against the blades razor-sharp edges, wincing lightly at the slight stabs of pain it send shooting up his arms. Allowing the ceremonial knife to fall to the floor he gazed at his bleeding palms; the cuts were not that serious, certainly they were nothing a simple healing spell couldn't cure later, before getting started on the first part of the ritual to call upon the power of Janus.

"The world that denies thee, thou inhabit," he chanted dabbing the blood in his left hand with his right middle finger before drawing a line of blood over his right eyelid, "the peace that ignores thee, thou corrupt," he repeated the process with his left middle finger, right hand and left eyelid before drawing a bloody cross on his forehead, "chaos I remain, as ever, thy faithful, degenerate son."

In front of him the idol began to glow a soft green and the features on the side facing him changed into that of a monstrous male figure. He had succeeded in gaining the attention of his patron god. With a mounting sense of ecstasy he began the most important part of the ritual, the weaving of the spell.

"Janus, evoco vestram animam," the Latin incantation rolling easily off his tongue. "Exaudi meam causam. Carpe noctem pro consilio vestro. Veni, appare et nobis monstra quod est infinita potestas. Persona se corpum et sanguium commutandum est. Vestra sancta praesentia concrescet viscera. Janus! Sume noctem!"

The soft glow of the idol brightened and pulsed, before bursting outwards in a rippling wave of energy that rapidly swept over Sunnydale. As it touched those wearing the tainted costumes they're very existence changed and twisted. Ethan smiled maliciously as he felt the magic surge through him and sensed the spell beginning to do its work.

"Showtime," he muttered softly before gasping as pain suddenly blossomed in his chest. The magic from the idol was still surging through him, going on for far longer than he had anticipated. He could feel it starting to drain his own store of magical power, a store built up over all his years of faithful service to chaos. _Ugh something's not right did I make a mistake in the incantation or something,_ he thought doubling over as the sensation manifested as intense pain similar to that caused by a heart attack.

His vision began to grey out at the edges and, realising he needed to stop the spell now before whatever mistake he'd made in the casting killed him, he tried to reach out to knock the idol of Janus off its plinth and out of the ring. An act which would destroy the idol and cause the spell to collapse unable to sustain itself without a focus. But before he could do so the pain ceased and exhausted he fell over backwards, the world going dark as consciousness fled his body.


	2. Chapter 2

**Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn**

_**Chapter Two**_

The wave of magic unleashed by Ethan Rayne swept across Sunnydale like a silent, invisible tsunami of arcane energy. As the wave encountered those costumes which had been previously enchanted by Ethan Rayne reality shifted and warped. Face paint became skin, masks became bone, muscle and flesh instead of simply moulded, coloured plastic while simultaneously altering – sometimes radically – the biology of the costumes wearer into that of whichever ghoul, demon or monster they had originally dressed as.

Through his viewing pool Janus observed the spells energies spreading, changing and warping reality according to the tenants of Ethan's spell. As the spell reached the Scoobies, and a few other individuals he'd chosen for this particular task, he reached out with his power and began to more precisely sculpt the outcome of the transformations as they began to take place. Before extending another tendril of his power reached across the dimensional barriers to a reality where the anime characters they were dressed as were real people.

In an instant he created a precise copy of one of the key ships of the series humanity in the dimension he was concerned with knew as Robotech. Precise down to the smallest detail, with one critical exception he didn't duplicate any of the crew as that was far beyond his abilities as only the Creator was capable of creating and duplicating souls. After making a few more minor changes to the ship, including the installation of a very specific piece of technology, it was ready. So with a quick tug of power he removed his copied ship from its reality and deposited it in a high orbit of the Scoobies dimensions Earth, adjusting its quantum and magical signatures as he did so, so no one would be able to tell the ship hadn't been created by the chaos spell cast by Ethan Rayne. _One final task,_ he thought quickly transporting a handful of craft from the bigger ship to the Sunnydale before he withdraw his power and sat back to watch.

And see what happened next.

* * *

**Sunnydale**

**A Few Moments Later**

Admiral Rick Hunter groaned softly as he opened his eyes to find himself lying flat out on an asphalt surface. _Ugh what hit me,_ he thought sitting up and looking around in incredulous confusion. He appeared to be on Earth, somewhere in small town America if he guessed right, but he didn't understand how that could be. The last thing he remembered was being aboard the SDF-3 _Pioneer_ as she orbited a newly liberated Tirol; he'd been with Lisa, the rest of the senior expedition members and Cabell to determine what was to happen to the planet now that it had been abandoned by the Robotech Masters before being devastated by the Regents attack. So how had he gotten back here to Earth, tens of thousands of light years from the Valvierre System and Tirol?

Deciding he would get no answers sitting here on his butt he stood up and gazed around. His confusion only grew as he recognized vehicles that hadn't existed since the Rain of Death, their manufacturing companies – like so much else – having been wiped from existence by the apocalypse Dolza had unleashed on the helpless planet. Had he somehow been transported back in time?

His apparent temporal dislocation wasn't the only thing that was strange about his current circumstances. There were aliens the likes of which he had never seen before running around causing absolute havoc. He couldn't help but jump as a car alarm went off behind him, startling him as it was a sound he hadn't heard since before the Rain.

"Okay Rick what have you been swept up in now," he said to himself. A loud roar from off to the right caught his attention and he turned to see what looked like a stereotypical werewolf coming towards him, salvia dripping from its fangs and feral yellow eyes alight with primal hunger and a fierce predatory intelligence. _You have got to be kidding me,_ he thought._ A werewolf! Or at least an alien that looks like a werewolf, and who looks like he wants to disembowel me right here. Better dissuade he/she/it whatever of that notion._ Without hesitation he withdrew his sidearm and fired a warning shot.

A bright whitish-blue beam of compressed, supercharged photons shot out from the SAL-9 Laser Pistol, striking the ground directly in front of the werewolf-like alien. Instantly and with a resounding crack the intense focused energy of the beam vaporised a chunk of asphalt throwing up a cloud of noxious smelling steam and smoke. Immediately the 'werewolf' ceased its approach emitting a confused puppy-like yap, it sounded so bizarre that he couldn't help but chuckle. Before firing another shot, deliberately aiming past. The lycanthrope winced as the laser passed close enough to its body for the creature to feel the intense heat of the beam against its fur covered skin as well as smell the ionisation trail left by the passage of the intense stream of energy.

Deciding that it didn't want to tangle with this thing firing at it, knowing instinctively that it would not survive a direct strike from one of the light beams, the werewolf emitted a howl of fury and defeat. Before turning and running off to seek some easier prey to sate its gnawing hunger. _Well at least it has brains enough to know tangling with a laser beam would be bad for its health,_ Rick thought watching the seemingly mythical creature retreat, tail metaphorically tucked between its legs.

"Rick, Rick help," a familiar female voice abruptly called from behind him, prompting him to spin around to see Minmei running up – dressed in the same stylish dress she'd worn when she'd sung at his and Lisa's wedding – a host of child-sized monsters – for lack of a better description – chasing after her. Without hesitation he acted, raising his sidearm and firing at one of the leading creatures threatening the singer/actress/somewhat little sister. The laser slammed into the creatures' torso with immense force producing a puff of smoke and flame from where its clothing was hit, even as the red-scaled, horned alien was knocked onto its ass, emitting a roar of combined surprise, incredulity, fury and pain.

The other creatures immediately froze. While the one he'd hit slowly, painfully picked itself up off the floor a vivid black smudge on its scaly chest showing where the beam had hit it. Rick blinked in surprise as a laser strike like that should have killed it outright unless its skin was some kind of natural armour, though even then the beam should have burned through. After all like all directed energy sidearms issued to the RDF/REF the SAL-9 had been designed with lessons learned from the study of Zentraedi sidearms in mind. There was no armour known to exist that the beam couldn't penetrate. _Until now that is,_ Rick thought as the wounded creature seemed to decide to – rather than risk another extremely painful laser hit – exercise the better part of valour. Emitting a roar it turned and began running away, the other creatures following it but not before shooting fearful glances at the SAL-9 Rick was still holding.

"Minmei are you alright," he asked, looking over his one-time crush turned dear friend for any sign of injuries. Thankfully aside from being visibly frightened by the circumstances that they found themselves in – which he could well understand – Minmei seemed unharmed.

"I'm fine, Rick," Minmei answered blushing slightly at the attention. Though she had long since come to accept that she'd lost her chance with Rick when it came to love – both due to her own stupidity and interference from her anti-military nut cousin Kyle – to Lisa Hayes she knew Rick still cared a great deal about her. And vice-versa as Rick was someone she could talk to without worrying about the media somehow getting wind of it. "What's going on?" she asked. "One minute I'm at the reception after your marriage then I'm here, wherever here is."

Rick frowned. "Minmei, that was eighteen months ago," he answered.

Minmei gasped. "Eighteen months? You're joking right?" Rick shook his head, he definitely wasn't joking in fact he wished he was. "Isn't time travel supposed to be impossible?"

"Supposedly but then how often since the initial arrival of the SDF-1 did we see the impossible become possible."

Minmei acknowledged that point with a nod. "What are we going to do? How are we going to get back?" she asked only just supressing the impulse to panic.

"I don't know," Rick admitted, "but one things for sure we need to find some shelter, given what's going on," he gestured to the chaos around them, "staying here on the street would not be a good idea." Minmei nodded in agreement and felt her shoulders drop in relief trusting Rick to look after her as he always had.

Abruptly the communicator on his left wrist chimed and vibrated. After slipping his sidearm back into his belt holster he checked the offending device, frowning as he did so as no one in this apparent time should be able to access it. The moment the screen came to life he smiled slightly as he realised that neither himself nor Minmei were alone. There were a number of additional RDF/REF identification transponders broadcasting, with one broadcasting brighter indicating either a rendezvous point or an emergency locator beacon – the watches computer wasn't sophisticated enough to differentiate the two signals, especially at this range.

"Looks like we're not only ones who've been transported back to whatever year this is," he said to Minmei. "I'm picking up eight additional location beacons. Including one set up as a rendezvous point."

Minmei smiled happy to learn that despite the circumstances they found themselves in, however they'd been sent back in time, that they weren't alone. Others were here as well. Her smile turned into a frown as she saw Rick scowling slightly, clearly puzzled by something he was seeing. "What is it, Rick," she asked.

"Something strange three of the signals are moving incredibly quickly," Rick answered, "they're heading right towards us. They should come into this street any second now." He looked in the direction the signals would appear from, Minmei followed his gaze and waited.

After a moment three high-tech looking motorcycles, two a soft grey colour the other a quite vibrant red, came around a bend and entered the street. At the sight of them Rick's eyes widened in a combination of shock and recognition. _Cyclones,_ he thought incredulous as seeing working models of the infantry mecha meant to replace the current Tornado battle bike which, while a powerful machine and capable of limited mechamorphosis it, wasn't powerful enough to face enemies as powerful as the Invid in infantry combat, _but that's impossible. They're still in the early prototype stage of development so how can these three be here?_

A marked suspicion began to grow in his mind, even as the group of veritech motorbikes slowed and came to a stop. They were being ridden by an eclectic group of people if ever there was one. Two of the riders were males, one wearing the kind of durable, functional clothing that had become popular in the years since the Rain of Death with people who lived in more remote areas without or with only limited access to one of the major population centres like New York which had escaped the Zentraedi bombardment or those established afterwards like Monument City. The other wearing an REF uniform that looked similar to the ones they'd been thinking of introducing to the Expeditionary Force and the whole RDF – replacing the slightly more flamboyant ASC inspired uniforms that were the current standard. Both men were wearing an armour over the top of their clothes that looked like a hard version of the current CVR-2 flexi-armour REF infantry and veritech fighter pilots wore. Like the Cyclone itself he recognised it as being CVR-3 armour, which like the mecha it was meant to work with, was still undergoing R&amp;D testing.

The other two riders were girls. One with long honey blond hair, wearing a red bodysuit with white highlights. Like the two men she was wearing a hard body armour over the top but while the boys armour was a mixture of the normal cream, grey and olive tones hers was red. The final rider, who was on the back of the uniformed man's Cyclone with her arms wrapped securely around him, had pinkish red hair and was wearing a brown jacket with a light blue tank top underneath and jeans.

For a moment more nothing happened and Rick got the distinct impression that they were as surprised to see him as he was to see them. Which he could kind of understand as from the uniform the one man was wearing, and the Cyclones themselves, they probably came from a point further down the timeline than he and Minmei did. Finally though the uniformed man who, from his position in the pack of bikes, appeared to be the leader flipped up the translucent blue helmet visor revealing the face of a young man in his mid-twenties.

"Admiral Hunter? Miss Lynn? Is that you?" the man asked a note of equal parts uncertainty and suspicion in his voice. Rick carefully studied him noticing the unit patch – which he understandably didn't recognise but which – a badge that indicated one of the Martian facilities and the rank insignia of a lieutenant commander. _Bit young for the rank though I can't say anything about that since I was a full commander and leader of Skull Squadron by the time I was twenty-four,_ he thought.

"Yes," Rick confirmed, "and you are?"

"Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard, 21st Combat Wing, Mars Division sir," the man answered.

"Hey Scott," the other man said. "Any idea what's going on here yet? First we all wake up here wherever here is and now this?"

"I have no idea, Rand," Scott admitted.

"We've all travelled in time," Rick explained, "as to my uniform well that's easily explained as from Commander Bernard's uniform and your mecha you're from a future point in the timeline than myself and Minmei. For me the year is 2024."

" 2022 for me," Minmei added helpfully keeping close to Rick as she wasn't quite sure what to make of these strangers yet, though the fact that at least one was another soldier was comforting.

"We're from 2044," Rand admitted, "how did we get here? Wherever and whenever here is?"

"I have no idea exactly where we are but I have a good idea when look around," Rick answered. "From the style of these vehicles we're in the mid nineteen nineties, just before the Global Civil War really kicked off and before the arrival of the SDF-1. And if I had to guess from the air temperature we're somewhere in what were the southern states of the old United States of America."

"How can you tell, sir," Scott asked curious.

"Because I grew up in Northern California. Until I was nineteen I never left for more than a few days to go to various amateur flying competitions or performances of pop's air circus," Rick replied before smiling slightly nostalgic as he remembered to his days with his father's flying circus. He'd been so innocent back then, so naïve and more immature than he'd liked to admit. Had still been when Roy had sent him that fateful invitation to attend the commissioning ceremony of the SDF-1, an invitation that had changed his life so dramatically and irrevocably; after all if he'd not attended he'd have never become a soldier and would never have met his beloved wife.

He mentally shook himself, there would be time to get nostalgic later. "So who are your other companions Commander Bernard," he asked.

"Oh right sorry sir," Scott answered cheeks colouring in embarrassment as he realised he'd not really introduced everyone. He gestured over his shoulder at the oddly quiet pink-haired woman. "This is Ariel, the motor mouth by there is Rand."

"Hey," Rand objected.

"Pretty apt description for you," Rook commented smirking, which earned her a glare from the wisecracking Argentinean. A glare which had absolutely no effect on the blond haired half-Zentraedi woman. She looked over at Rick and had to admit he looked very handsome though she couldn't say she cared for the somewhat flamboyant uniform though it did fit the uniforms favoured at the time he and Minmei apparently came from. "I'm Rook by the way, Rook Bartley."

Rick raised an eyebrow. "Any relation to Kyle Bartley?" he asked curious as last time he'd seen the former pilot he'd just gotten married to an ex-Zentraedi warrior named Vala Norri.

"My father," Rook confirmed.

"Sir are you the source of the signal we were following," Scott asked, "after we woke up we picked up an REF homing signal and started heading towards it."

"No that's coming from somewhere over in that direction," Rick pointed down the street. "We were just about to head there ourselves."

"Oh, well hop on we can all go," Scott suggested.

"Sticking together would be a good idea," Rick agreed. "Alright Minmei why don't you hop on behind Ms Bartley. If that's alright with Ms Bartley."

"No problem," Rook agreed.

"No problem giving a lift here either," Rand added seeing the sense in them all sticking together at least till they figured out just what the hell was going on here. And why himself, Rook, Scott and Ariel were the only ones of their group here. Since they'd woken up here, wherever it was, there had been no sign of Lancer, Annie or Lunk nor had they responded when attempts were made to contact them via radio. Something which had set mental alarm bells ringing for all of them.

"Commander Bernard I'll send you the coordinates to the rendezvous point," Rick stated activating his watch and forwarding the coordinates of the rendezvous point to the navigation system of Commander Bernard's Cyclone.

"I've got them sir," Scott confirmed as they flashed up on his control panel's mini-map screen. A screen he really didn't have much chance to use while battling the Invid as they'd shot down all the RDF's GPS satellites after they drove the remains of the ASC naval forces that had beaten the Robotech Masters away from Earth. Thus he hadn't thought to check for the beacon coordinates on that particular system, assuming it could link to the more primitive and less accurate GPS systems of this time.

"Then we better get going," Rick decided before escorting Minmei over to Rook's Cyclone and helping her climb on. A few moments later he was climbing onto the other Cyclone behind Rand.

Seconds later they were all on their way again, racing towards the homing beacon all hoping they would at last get some answers as to what they were all doing here.

* * *

**Stargate Command**

**Cheyenne Mountain Complex**

**That Same Time**

Major General George Hammond was lost in thought as he stood by the briefing room windows gazing down at the silent, dark Stargate. Just over five hours ago Colonel O'Neill and the rest of SG-1 had, in defiance of the Congressional shutdown order currently on the SGC, overridden the security systems and travelled through the gate to a set of coordinates that Dr Jackson had brought back from an alternate reality. A reality in which Earth was being steadily bombed into oblivion by the forces of the Goa'uld System Lord Apophis in retribution both for the trouble they'd caused Apophis personally and the death of Supreme System Lord Ra.

An attempt to send SG-2 and SG-3 to retrieve them, so that both Colonel O'Neill and Captain Carter could face court martial for their blatant defiance of orders, had failed. The coordinates had refused to lock a second time. At first they'd thought that Captain Carter had left a little viral surprise for them in the dialling computers, she had after all written the software they ran on and would thus know how to breach the firewalls and circumvent the anti-viral safeguards without being obvious about it, to prevent them following them. But that had soon been ruled out when they'd been able to successfully dial the Alpha Site. Which meant that for some reason Doctor Jackson's coordinates simply were no longer valid and he didn't want to think what that could mean.

"Sir," a voice said from behind him as the reflection of Master Sergeant Norman Walter Harriman appeared in the ballistic glass.

"Yes," George asked turning to look at the other man. Immediately he noticed the grim look on the other man's face which instantly set all manner of alarm bells ringing in his head.

"Sir near orbit radar reports that a large anomalous contact has just appeared in the sky above Northern California," Harriman reported. "There was no warning, one minute it wasn't there then it was. Whatever it is it's in a geostationary orbit directly over a small town called Sunnydale."

"Any idea what it is," George queried a look of concern appearing on his face as he spoke.

"We believe it to be a ship. A very big ship. However we did not pick up any sign of the vessel approaching, which means it's probably been there for a while just cloaked somehow."

"How big a ship?"

"From the radar reports the vessel is over seventeen hundred meters long and five hundred and eighteen meters wide. We've tried to contact them but so far there has been no response from the crew. We're trying to get a hold of one of the observatories in the Sierra Nevada's to see if they can get a look. Also I'm afraid that's not the only bit of bad news that I have."

_Never rains but it pours hey George, _he thought. "Go on," he said to prompt the other man knowing he wasn't going to like whatever else he had to say. Hell he didn't like what he'd heard already; that a ship just over five times the length and just under seven times the width of one of the Navy's Nimitz-class supercarriers had mysteriously appeared in orbit, without any warning whatsoever, was cause for great concern.

Especially as it wouldn't take long for someone on the ground to spot it – a ship that big would be easy to see from the surface with any half decent pair of binoculars – and tip off the media. Which could at best start a media feeding frenzy about first contact and at worst lead to a public panic. Neither outcome was something the US Government and Military would want to deal with just now; or ever which was why they'd kept the existence of the Stargate a secret even after the threat of the Goa'uld became known.

"Deep space radar has picked up two large blips passing Saturn, projections indicate that they're on a direct course to Earth. Radar calculates that at their current rate of speed the contacts will reach planetary orbit in just under four hours. NASA's repositioning Hubble now so we can get a better look at them."

_Oh shit,_ George thought looking away from him, back down at the Stargate, a cold knot of dread forming in his stomach. He had no idea what the first contact could be, though it was almost certain to be a ship, but he had a very good idea what the incoming ships were, who they belonged to and why they were coming to Earth. For a moment he wondered if the two groups were connected but then decided against it, as if the first ship over California had been Goa'uld then they would already be under attack; from that position the first ship could effortlessly decimate the most populous state in the union before moving on to wipe out the entire West Coast all the way up to British Columbia and Alaska. Hell if that ship had been there for a long time, just hidden by a Star Trek-style cloaking device, and had had hostile intentions they would likely have all been dead long ago.

"I guess Doctor Jackson is lucky," he said softly.

"Why's that sir," Harriman asked curious.

"That he's not going to be here to see his nightmare come true a second time," George replied, before turning and marching back into his office and picking up the red phone. A phone that connected straight to the White House. "This is Major General Hammond. I need to talk to the President."

"Yes sir please stand by," a White House operator responded immediately. After a moment there was a click and President Marcel came on the line.

"Yes General Hammond what is it?"

"Sir we have a very serious problem."

* * *

**Sunnydale**

**California, A Few Minutes Later**

Riding on the back of the Cyclones, in spite of the chaos that seemed to be reigning over this small town, it didn't take the assembled Robotech soldiers and the members of Scott Bernard's resistance cell long to reach the source of the homing signal. Twice during their journey some of the various alien creatures had tried to accost them, only for a few well aimed warning shots from the proton cannon on Rand's Cyclone to persuade them that they were too much trouble to attack. Which was something Rick was thankful for as he climbed off the back of the aforementioned Cyclone.

The source of the signal appeared to be coming from within an area walled off with white plasterboards like those used on construction sites prior to the Rain of Death. Which from the signs and warnings was what was beyond the barrier. Both the display on Rick's watch/wrist computer and the navigational systems on the three Cyclones confirmed that to be the case.

"How to do we get in," Rand asked seeing nothing but a wall of white boards covered in various signs and warnings though he wasn't that familiar with their meanings. After all in the time he came from building on a large scale by anyone other than the Invid – who'd been building more and more hives as their numbers increased before Ariel convinced the Regis to leave Earth to its rightful inhabitants – like this had been completely non-existent, most people being barely able to keep their homes from falling down. "Switch to battle armour and flyover?"

"That would be a bit of a waste of energy and we can't afford to deplete the power cells on your Cyclones too much given the protoculture matrix won't even be on the planet yet," Rick pointed out, "there will be an entrance somewhere around here we just need to find it."

Without waiting for a response he began looking for the entrance. He quickly found it took metal mesh covered gates bound together by a bolt along with a thick heavy duty chain and padlock. "Over here," he called back to the others while taking his laser pistol from its quick-draw holster on his belt. A single well-aimed blast was all it took to slice through the links of the chain. With the tension broken and the weight of the padlock pulling on the other end the chain unwound and dropped to the deck with a clank of metal. A moment later he had the bolt pulled back and the gates were opening on very squeaky hinges.

"Someone's bound to have heard that," Scott commented as he felt Ariel slip off the back of his Cyclone already knowing what he was going to do next. A flick of a switch and the Cyclone began to change, standing up quickly he felt it wrapping around him forming into a complex suite of powered armour that made a single modern infantry soldier more powerful and dangerous than an entire battalion of pre-Robotech troops even with armour support. From behind him he heard Rook persuade Minmei to get off before she and Rand copied his action.

The faint whirling sound of mechamorphosis behind him had Rick spinning around, just in time to see the three Cyclones shift into armour mode making each of the riders look like a vastly scaled down, but still extremely dangerous, battloid. It was the same sort of principle the Tornado had worked with though nowhere near as well hence why Dr Lang and the Robotech Research Group had started Project: Cyclone. He couldn't help but smile slightly as the part of him that would always be the cocky pilot said 'cool' and 'I have so got to try that'. "Good thinking," he said aloud a clear note of approval in his voice.

"Sir might I suggest we scout inside first," Scott asked.

"Good idea commander proceed."

"Yes sir," Scott acknowledged before leading Rand and Rook into the building site. It seemed to be abandoned but only temporarily as everywhere he could see stacks of building materials covered in tarpaulins or still encased in plastic wrapping to protect it from the elements. Cautious they moved deeper inside.

They soon found the source of the homing signal they'd been following.

Sitting on a large concrete slab in the centre of the site were six Alpha fighters with Beta fighters attached to the back. All six Alpha's had their cockpits open waiting for pilots to climb aboard, the Beta's with the doors to their small passenger compartments open. There was however no sign of the pilots and according to a check of the thermal emissions all the veritechs were cold, like they'd been here for a while long enough for the heat signatures of their engines to dissipate completely.

"Sir," Scott said activating his comm. system. "The sites clear and we've found the source of the beacon signal."

"What is it," Rick's voice responded.

"There are six Alpha/Beta combination fighters here," Scott replied "the fighter in the leader position is the one broadcasting the homing signal."

"Any sign of the pilots?"

"No sir, and these fighters' engines are completely cold. They've been here awhile."

"Very strange why bring a group of fighters here then leave them completely unattended," Rick commented. "This mystery just keeps growing and growing. We'll be right there in a few moments. In the meantime get in one of the fighters and see if you can access the flight computer."

Even though he knew the admiral wouldn't be able to see him Scott nodded. "Yes sir," he acknowledged before signing off and going down onto his knees, before giving the command for the Cyclone to disengage from armour mode.

"Why do you want to access the flight computer, Scott," Rand asked watching his blue haired friend stand back up clad only in his CVR armour now, before pulling the Cyclone upright into its normal motorcycle form.

"The fighter's computer should contain a record of where these veritechs came from and how long they've been here," Scott replied walking up to the closest Alpha and hopping in before beginning to tap away at the controls.

"Oh yeah I forgot about those," Rand answered mentally kicking himself for forgetting it, the flight data records were one of the first things Scott and Lancer had taught him and Rook about when they'd taught them how to fly Alpha fighters. And not just how to fly them; but fly them in combat and make full use of their mechamorphic abilities and vast arsenals of weaponry.

Scott made a surprised noise. "That's odd," he said scowling at the screen.

"What is it?" Rook asked.

"There is no data here," Scott replied, "navigational records are completely blank beyond stored coordinates that is. It's almost like the navigational computers not been used, power usage records, engine power and performance records everything is blank. It's like this fighters never been used before."

"So what it just appeared here like we did," Rand asked.

"Very likely," Scott agreed before frowning. "And it looks like us and these fighters aren't the only ones caught up in whatever this is. Tactical navigation is picking up an identification transponder on a fleet frequency – it's coming from low orbit."

"Can you tell who it is," Rick asked as he came up with Minmei and the still silent Ariel in tow, clearly having heard what he'd just said.

"Yes sir I can," Scott confirmed checking the screens. "It's the SDF-3."

* * *

**Authors Note: Another chapter bites the dust. The first groups have met up but where is Buffy/Lisa? Who else has been affected by the spell? How is their presence going to affect the upcoming attack on Earth by Apophis? You'll have to tune in next time to find out. Evil aren't I… lol.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Ship of the Line: Pioneers Dawn**

Authors Notes: I think it should be obvious by now that the Stargate elements of this story are set at the end of season one beginning of season two of Stargate SG-1 however I have had to tweak some of the events and timings of the season two premier episode The Serpent's Lair for story telling purposes in both this chapter and following chapters as well as clean up some discontinuities with later developments in SG-1. For example this time Teal'c recognised that they were aboard a Ha'tak-class ship, he is also capable of piloting the ship as other Jaffa have been seen to do even before the fall of the System Lords.

As always with my Stargate fics conversation in bold is a Goa'uld speaking while conversation in bold italics is a symbiote talking to their host. Now then without further ado let's get on with the chapter.

Disclaimer: I still do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement, so please no legal action I have no money to give anyone.

* * *

**Chapter Three**

**Elsewhere In Sunnydale**

**That Same Time**

Admiral Lisa Hayes-Hunter swore colourfully as she ducked down behind a convenient dumpster, just in time to avoid a thrown bottle that crashed into the wall and shattered. Showering the wall with its contents that from the smell was alcohol.

Peering cautiously around the dumpster Lisa noticed that strangely none of the three black robed individuals she could see seemed to be carrying any weapons. Instead the fireballs and what looked like balls of blue energy seemed to just appear in their hands. But then again it was just the latest in a series of bizarre events that had happened to her in the last half or so, ever since she'd woken up here seemingly transported through time and space to what appeared to be Earth – and an Earth that from the style of the architecture and the vehicles was a pre-Rain of Death Earth, possibly even a pre-robotechnology Earth given most of the vehicles seemed to have internal combustion engines – which had been phased out in favour of hydrogen fuel cells during the decade between the arrival of the alien ship that became the SDF-1 and the coming of the Zentraedi to retrieve said ship.

Quite how this had happened she had absolutely no idea. The last thing she remembered was being aboard the SDF-3 _Pioneer_ in the quarters she shared with Rick after a long, hard day of discussions about what to do with Tirol now that the Regent and his Invid had been booted off the planet – but not before leaving much of the planet in ruins. As she recalled she'd been in bed, cuddled up to her beloved husband, and drifting off to sleep.

Next she was here, wherever and whenever here, was. Thankfully whatever had transported her here had dressed her in a clean uniform it would have been extremely embarrassing – not to mention more than a little chilly – to have been stark naked when she'd woken up on that pavement.

Awakening to a scene that she could only describe as being absolute pandemonium with strange alien creatures, which looked for all the world like various goblins and demons from common mythology, running amok. A few of them had tried to attack her, thankfully though she'd found her uniform also included the standard SAL-9 laser pistol sidearm – along with bizarrely enough a sharp wooden stake in one pocket – which had made scaring the mostly pint sized aliens/demons relatively easy. A few beams whizzing past their ears – or whatever it was they heard with – had been enough to send even the most ferocious of the little monsters running with their metaphorical tails firmly tucked between their legs.

With her safety secured she'd been able to turn her attention to her vibrating watch computer. To find that she apparently wasn't the only one to have been somehow brought back here to the past. Others were here as well, seemingly scattered all over the place, and that someone had set up a rendezvous point. Unable to establish radio communication, presumably because she was out of range, she'd started heading in the direction of the rendezvous.

Which had brought her to her current situation as she'd been about to turn down another street when the three men who'd chased her in here, men whose features seemed oddly distorted with glowing yellow eyes filled with a truly feral intelligence, overly pronounced brow ridges and fangs of all things. Instinctively knowing that whatever these things were they a) weren't really men and b) meant to kill her she'd turned and run into this alleyway. Only to find it was a dead end.

Lisa growled slightly as she heard the three men-things laughing at having gotten her cornered. _Oh no you don't you're not going to get me without a fight_ she thought drawing her pistol and pointing it right at the man on the right.

Without hesitation she fired.

Instantly the blue-white lance of supercharged compressed photons that made up a protoculture-fuelled laser beam shot out and smashed into the man faster than he could blink let alone react. What happened next was truly shocking.

The man-thing she'd hit convulsed as the laser ripped into his body, before emitting a truly unearthly scream of pain as he erupted into flames. The inferno enveloping him with such a speed and ferocity that it was almost like someone had doused him in petrol or some other such accelerant. _I know lasers and particle beams are hot but they shouldn't do that,_ she thought as before her surprised eyes the immolated man-thing seemed to implode – leaving a small pile of smouldering dusty ash on the floor.

For a few seconds the other two men-monsters gaped in shock at where their fellow had once been, the laser-induced manner of his fiery death having taken them by total surprise. Allowing Lisa a few critical seconds to shake off her own surprise at what had just taken place, aim at the man or whatever he was to the left and fire. As with the first person she'd hit he convulsed, then screeched in agony before dissolving first into flames then smouldering dust-like ash. The third emitted a deep, animal like growl.

"You killed Jake and Steve, I'm going to drain you dry for that, Slayer," he snarled but before he could move another laser blast, this time from somewhere off to the side, somewhere Lisa couldn't see, struck him. As with the other two the man-thing screamed in agony as the blast of energy drilled into his body instantly setting clothing and flesh aflame. In an instant he was gone reduced to a third small mound of ash on the floor.

Lisa sighed in relief and stood up keeping her pistol handy, just in case, cautiously moved towards the front of the alleyway. Just as a familiar blue-haired figure appeared a laser pistol identical to hers held in its hand. Even in the gloom of the alleyway she could easily make out the fact that the figure was both male and wearing glasses.

Which meant it could only be one person as their was only one man she knew who had blue hair and wore glasses. "Nice timing, Max," she said stepping out into the light and holstering her pistol.

"You're welcome, Lisa," Captain Maximillian Sterling answered, holstering his own pistol. "Now do you mind telling me what in the name of space is going on around here? One minute I'm getting ready to go on duty the next I'm here wherever and whenever here is. And what we're those things? Why'd they call you Slayer?"

"I wish I knew, Max," Lisa admitted, "I have no more idea what's going on here than you do as like you one minute I was in mine and Rick's quarters on the SDF-3 next I was here. Somehow we've been transported through both time and space back here to Earth, a pre-robotechnology Earth if I'm not mistaken, and we're not alone."

"You noticed the signals as well huh," Max commented not surprised, Lisa always tended to be on the ball with these things.

"Yeah I did. I was heading in that direction when those things, whatever they were, attacked me." As she finished speaking Lisa checked her watch to determine just how far from their destination they were, it only seemed to be a few more streets away. She also noticed that a number of signals had already arrived at the location with only two still further away – one of whom seemed to be only a few feet away.

"Looks like we're going to have company," she said gesturing to the entrance to a side street a moment before a tall blond-haired man wearing one of the old-style flight suits stepped out. Lisa and Max both recognised him instantly and froze in shock, even as the man turned to look at them – doing a double take of his own at the sight of them.

"Lisa is that you," Commander Roy Fokker asked gaping as he saw Lisa dressed in an unfamiliar red and black uniform with gold highlights, a uniform with the stars of a full admiral on the collar. A man he vaguely recognised as being a member of Rick's Vermillion Squadron was standing behind her, dressed in a similar uniform though his was primarily blue and white with black highlights. He was wearing the rank insignia of a captain.

"Roy Fokker?" Lisa exclaimed her brain busily interrogating her eyes about the impossible sight before her. "Impossible… you're… you're dead."

"Nah ugh not me," Roy replied frowning. "I'm alive and what the hell is going on? What's with the different uniforms?"

"You must have been caught in whatever this is just like we were," Lisa mused, "Roy this is going to sound strange but could you tell us what year you think it is?"

Roy scowled. "What year?" he repeated looking at Lisa as if she'd gone nuts.

"Humour me."

"Okay its 2011, March 7th if you want to be precise," Roy replied, and saw the look the two exchanged, which sent a shiver of worry down his spine. "It's not 2011 for you is it?"

"No for me it's 2024," Lisa replied.

"2025 for me," Max added.

"Huh you're from different times?" Roy exclaimed "guess that explains the uniforms and why you've got admirals stars on your collar Lisa. And why you thought…" His voice trailed off for a moment as understanding came. "I bought it didn't I?" he asked a cold feeling of dread forming in his stomach.

"Yes," Lisa admitted.

"Jesus. Okay, okay how did we all get here," Roy asked putting the news that he'd died on the mental back burner for now, there would be time to think about, or rather brood about, that later.

"I have no idea," Lisa admitted, "last thing I remember before waking up here was being in mine and Rick's quarters. Max remembers being just about to go on duty."

"Wait, wait you and Rick?" Roy queried stunned. "You're together?"

"I guess that would be a bit surprising to you," Lisa admitted. "Especially as Rick was still chasing Minmei in your time, but we're more than together in mine. Rick's not my boyfriend anymore or even my fiancée… he's my husband."

"I… I see," Roy stammered back mind going numb with shock. Oh he'd suspected for months that there was something between Rick and Lisa. The sexual tension between them – that had tended to manifest in blazing rows often over the comm. to the amusement of both listening pilots and the bridge bunnies – had been obvious to everyone on the SDF-1. Well except the persons involved that was; Lisa had kept insisting that Rick was cocky, immature and undeserving of the responsibility placed on his shoulders as a squadron leader, while Rick had continued to accuse her of being an inflexible old sourpuss. Though to be fair they hadn't argued quite so vehemently since their escape from that Zentraedi battleship.

But he wouldn't have in a million years expected them to acknowledge the truth about how they really felt and act on that truth, as in his experience both Rick and Lisa had stubborn streaks bigger than even the largest Zentraedi battleship. Said stubborn streaks, combined with the fact that both had strong alpha personalities that had to have the last word in an argument, kind of made it hard to believe that they'd ever admit that they loved each other let alone get married.

"Commander Fokker." Lisa's voice in full command tone jolted him out of his stunned state and he reflexively moved to stand at attention. "Stand easy you can go into shock over mine and Rick's exact relationship later right now we have other more pressing matters to attend to."

"You're right I'm sorry," Roy answered mentally shaking off the last of the shock-generated mental cobwebs. "So we've all travelled in time?"

"And space but yes," Max answered. "My self and Lisa were aboard the SDF-3 orbiting a distant planet called Tirol. Though don't ask how we all got here neither of us has any idea."

"We should continue towards the rendezvous point on our watch computers," Lisa said firmly deciding on a course of action. "Maybe some of those already there will have some real idea what's actually going on around here."

"Maybe we should try contacting whoever's there," Max suggested. "We should be close enough now for the radios in our watches to make contact."

"Good point," Lisa agreed knowing that while the radio in a comm. watch/wrist computer was short range – aboard ship or in groundside REF facilities long range communication was achieved through internal signal relays – they should be close enough to make contact now. She raised her watch and decided to try. "This is Admiral Lisa Hayes to whoever is at the rendezvous point being detected on our wrist computers," she said formally using her maiden name as she always did in her professional life – it prevented confusion in the ranks given Rick was also an admiral albeit one rank below her, "if anyone can hear me, please respond on this channel."

"Lisa," a familiar voice answered as the screen changed to show Rick. "You got caught up in this as well huh?" A concerned look appeared on his face as he noticed her somewhat flushed features. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Rick don't worry. And yes I did get caught up in this time space distortion whatever it is," Lisa replied smiling feeling more than a little relieved that whatever else was going on she'd be facing it alongside her beloved husband. "What about you are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Where are you and are you alone?"

"I'm about a mile or two from your current location. And I've got two others with me. One is Max the other… Rick you'd better brace yourself… the other person here with me is Roy." She wasn't surprised when Rick gasped before looking down and away at the mention of Roy. She knew full well how much Rick still missed him, how much pain Roy's death still caused him and how much suddenly knowing he was here alive again would shake him up.

After a few moments Rick seemed to pull himself together and looked back up, though not immediately at her. She could see his lips moving as he spoke to someone who was present with him but lip reading had never been her strongest skill. She got the vague impression that he was giving somebody some orders but couldn't read his lips well enough to determine exactly what orders he was giving. After a few moments he nodded, clearly acknowledging something presumably a response to whatever orders he'd given, before looking back at her. Though his face was composed she could see a tell tale shine in his expressive blue eyes that indicated he was holding back his emotions – especially those that would have been triggered by a living, breathing Roy being here.

"Lisa I'm sending some people to meet you and bring you here," he said his voice admirably level. "They're on the backs of production model Cyclones so they'll be with you in just a few minutes. Then once everyone's here we can make our way up to the ship."

"Understood Rick we'll be waiting for them," Lisa replied before registering the last part of his statement. "There's a ship in orbit? Is it one of ours?"

Rick nodded. "The _Pioneer's_ in orbit I've tried contacting them however there has been no response beyond an automatic acknowledgement from the communications array," he replied, "it's almost like there is nobody aboard her, which like this entire situation doesn't make any sense at all."

"No it doesn't," Lisa agreed instantly feeling more than a small amount of concern about the SDF-3, and that fact that there appeared to be nobody aboard her. As Rick had said the situation made absolutely no sense at all but then neither had their whole night so far. "Hopefully we'll be able to get some answers soon."

"We can but hope," Rick answered. "I better go finish getting these fighters ready to launch for when everyone's here. See you in a few minutes, Hunter out." Rick's image disappeared as he closed the channel from his end allowing Lisa to lower her arm.

"What are Cyclones," Roy asked curious as he naturally didn't recognise the name.

"They're a type of infantry mecha that's supposed to have similar mechamorphic abilities as veritech fighters do only switching between a motorcycle and a suit of powered combat armour instead of the three modes of a veritech," Max explained. "They're still experimental right now, or rather they are in our time. Given Rick said production model the ones coming for us, along with their riders, are likely from a point further down the timeline. Just like Commander Fokker here is from an earlier point in the timeline."

"They sound cool," Roy commented already itching to try one out. He wondered if you needed specialist training to use one in the same way that you did a veritech fighter.

"Your not going to find out how cool they are, whatever they are," a voice with a distinct cockney accent said from behind them making them all spin around. To come face to face with a tall platinum blond haired man, a few more men all dressed in dark clothing and a host of the little aliens/demons they'd all seen earlier stood around him. "I'm going to give you one chance," the man said grinning in an evil fashion. "Surrender her," he gestured to Lisa, "to me and I might let the other two of you go alive."

"I don't think so," Lisa replied drawing her SAL-9 sidearm, aware that Max was doing the same while Roy pulled out a semi-automatic hand gun.

The man chuckled. "Aren't you forgetting something, Slayer," he asked with an amused smirk on his face, "bullets can't hurt vampires."

_There's that name again,_ Lisa though, _why do people keep referring to me as Slayer?_ She smirked back regardless. "Who says this fires bullets," she replied before snapping the pistol up and firing a laser blast at the closest of the men. The man shrieked inhumanly as the beam instantly set skin and clothing on fire, before crumpling into a smouldering pile of dust on the floor.

"You were saying," Lisa asked smirking at the gobsmacked platinum blond. A blond who shook himself, throwing off his surprise at seeing a real life directed energy weapon in action, before snarling as his features shifted and changed assuming the same distorted inhuman look as the three beings she'd encountered earlier.

"Get them," Spike yelled at the small posse of minions he'd assembled. Lisa, Max and Roy braced themselves as the hoard of creatures roared a variety of battle cries.

Then began to charge…

…a second before a bright whitish pink ellipsoid slammed right into the front of them and detonated, the energy of the plasma annihilation disc vaporising many of the onrushing creatures while the concussion wave of the blast sent the remainder sprawling. A moment later an enormous pink and purple mecha of Invid design – though the exactly model was unfamiliar – landed right in front of them. For something so massive it had moved with an admirable stealth as none of them had heard or seen it – till it fired that annihilation disc.

"What the hell," Max exclaimed shocked that an Invid had apparently come to their rescue as from his perspective he'd been fighting them a few days ago. Though this particularly Invid mecha did look different to the ones fielded by the Regents forces, sleeker and more advanced while still being clearly of Invid design and manufacture. _Maybe it belongs to the faction of Invid aligned to the Regis,_ he thought as the mecha pointed one arm – and the heavy plasma cannon mounted their at the remaining creatures, including the platinum blond who'd first threatened them – in clear warning.

They took the hint and immediately scrambled away fleeing the Invid battloid and its deadly arsenal of weaponry. Slowly the mecha turned towards them.

"What the hell is that," Roy asked.

"An Invid battloid though I'm not sure what model it is," Lisa admitted cautiously watching the alien mecha for any sign it was going to attack them. At this close a range they'd have no chance of surviving should the mecha's pilot decide to shoot at them.

The shot never came.

Instead a yellow streak of light emerged from the centre of the mecha and came down to street level – before with a flash turning into a young woman, a woman with oddly styled light green hair, purple coloured eyes and wearing a form fitting purple and black jumpsuit. "Who are you," she asked.

"I am Sera, daughter of the Regis and Princess of the Invid," the young human-looking woman replied.

Lisa raised an eyebrow. "You don't look like any Invid we've encountered before," she commented prompting a puzzled frown from Sera. But only for a moment before she chuckled as she realised what the human woman – in older RDF uniform design – was getting at. She was obviously from the expeditionary forces that had engaged her people in combat over Tirol, Praxis, Kabarra and a dozen other worlds. The Invid form they would have therefore most encountered would be their stage three and stage four forms i.e. a vaguely slug-like humanoid creature. They wouldn't have encountered Invid transmuted to human form by the Regis – especially if her royal command battloids sensors were correct and they were out of their time.

"Understandable. The Regis only recently began transmutation of our people into a human-like form," she explained, while inwardly already beginning to plan how she could use this to improve things for Humans and Invid alike.

If she was stuck here in this planets past maybe she could help build a bridge between their two races, a bridge which would hopefully prevent them making the same mistakes they did last time. With the biggest of said mistakes being the invasion and conquest of this planet and a people who – despite looking a lot like the hated Tirolians due to the fact that they were apparently genetic cousins to one another – had never intended aggression towards the Invid and never would have harmed them if a) the Regent hadn't opened fire on them without warning or provocation and b) if the Regis hadn't led a full on invasion of their homeworld, an invasion the Regis herself had ultimately considered to be the error it was. An error she'd done her best to correct by returning the planet to its rightful inhabitants and destroying the neutron-s missiles as she and the vast majority of the Invid left. Only her sister Ariel and a few other human-form Invid remaining behind for their own reasons.

"You can put those away," she added gesturing at the pistols the three Humans were holding, two of whom were clearly energy sidearms – she could clearly sense the micro protoculture cells powering them – the other an unfamiliar design. "I am not going to hurt you," she continued as she sensed then heard some Cyclones approaching.

That did send a shiver of unease down her spine as while her battloid was powerful she couldn't hope to fight off a Cycloner assault by herself if they were ordered to attack her. Especially as they wouldn't hesitate to attack from multiple directions at once and it only required one good hit in the wrong place to turn her battloid to scrap. After a moment the Cyclones she'd been hearing and sensing – or rather she'd been sensing their protoculture fuel cells – came into this street.

And Sera felt herself relax somewhat as she recognised them. The three Cyclones approached and came to a halt, before the leader hopped off his bike. Removing the helmet of his CVR-3 armour in the process revealing the familiar dark blue hair and chiselled features of Scott Bernard.

"Sera?" Scott queried in surprise at seeing her, "how did you get here?"

"I suspect the same way that you did," Sera answered, "one minute I was watching Mother Regis leave Earth with my brethren the next I'm here. Is Lancer with you as he'd vanished when I woke up here?"

"No we can't find him either nor Lunk and Annie," Rand spoke up from the back of his Cyclone, "though your sister's here we left her back with the fighters."

"Ariel's here!" Sera exclaimed feeling a profound sense of relief as while it wasn't her beloved Lancer having Ariel here would at least meant she had some family – and wasn't that a novel idea that had, along with the ability to feel complex emotions and capacity for fully independent thought, come with her transmutation to a human form – around her.

"Yes," Scott confirmed.

"Ugh confused," Lisa said, "who are you? And who is Ariel?"

Rand sighed. "Sheesh doesn't anyone know who anyone is tonight?" he moaned.

"Well if we're all from different points in the timeline it would make sense that we don't all recognise each other," Rook pointed out slightly amused by her somewhat boyfriends antics.

"Which is something that can be easily remedied," Roy commented getting everyone's attention. Prompting a few mildly sheepish looks followed by a short round of introductions. "Now that that's out of the way maybe we should resume heading to the rendezvous point? And then make our way up to the ship."

"Roy's right we should," Lisa agreed. "You and Rick both mentioned fighters, Rand. How many are there and what kind are they?"

"There are six of them," Scott answered before Rand could. "Six Alpha's all with docked Beta's. And it's downright bizarre all the flight data and performance logs are blank. It's literally like they've just come off the production lines."

"Strange," Lisa commented, "hopefully we will soon get some answers about what's going on around here."

"This ship you are talking about where is it?" Sera asked "and which ship is it?"

"It's the SDF-3," Scott answered, "she's in a geostationary orbit over the town but there doesn't appear to be anybody aboard her, or at least nobody capable of answering Admiral Hunter's hails."

Sera frowned slightly, that was very strange indeed. "My battloid is fully capable of exo-atmospheric flight," she said, "I could go on ahead of you and attempt to reconnoitre the ships situation."

"That sounds like a good idea," Lisa agreed, "just be careful as even if there is nobody aboard the ships point defence systems might be operating on automatic. If they are and they detect that you're an Invid they'll blow you out of the sky."

"I'll be careful," Sera assured her even as she hoped the point defences were off as she didn't relish trying to dodge volleys of pulsed laser bolts from the SDF-3's defensive weapons emplacements, before teleporting herself back inside her royal command battloid.

"You all better get on," Scott said blinking as Sera teleported herself back aboard her battloid. _I'm still not used to seeing that,_ he thought even though he'd seen Ariel do it a few times recently. He slipped his helmet back on and climbed back aboard his Cyclone.

"Agreed," Lisa replied, "Max you go with Rook, Roy with Rand and I'll go with Commander Bernard."

"Alright Lisa," Roy and Max agreed before jogging off to join their respective rides. Lisa for her part walked over to Scott's and climbed on behind him, feeling the young man stiffen slightly in nerves at who his passenger was.

"Relax commander I don't bite," she said amused. _Well often anyway,_ she thought recalling some of the rows she'd had with Rick when he'd been this guy's age _only if you annoy me._

"Sorry ma'am," Scott answered his cheeks colouring slightly in embarrassment before he made himself calm down "everybody ready?"

"Ready here, Scott," Rand replied a comment echoed half a second later by Rook.

"Alright then," Scott answered starting the engine on the Cyclone and bringing the machine around so they were facing back in the direction they'd come from. Rand and Rook did the same with their own machines and together the three Cyclones began making their way back towards where Rick and Minmei were waiting with the veritechs. A moment later they heard a roar behind them as Sera fired her battloid's thrusters, sending the mecha shooting up into the sky aiming for space.

* * *

**A Few Minutes Later**

The six Alpha/Beta combined fighters were all humming and pulsing with power as the three Cyclones and the six people riding them pulled into the currently deserted building site. Rick having busily moved between them bringing there flight systems fully online – or rather moving between the Alpha's bringing their systems online which had automatically caused the docked Beta's to power up as well – ready for the journey to orbit while he'd been waiting for them. The hum of multiple protoculture-fuelled engines filling the site with a constant rumble, a rumble that seemed to make the very air itself vibrate with power.

"Wow," Roy breathed climbing off the back of Rook's Cyclone gazing at the veritechs in awe. He could clearly see the lineage of the VF-1 Valkyrie in these fighters but these were sleeker and more elegant, obviously much more advanced. A slow smile made its way across his face as he couldn't wait to get behind the controls of one of these beauties and see just what it could do. His eyes slowly scanned the closest fighter noticing everything especially how it seemed to be two fighters in one. He could clearly see where the front two fifths of the fighter was joined to the rest. He could also make out multiple missile hatches and felt himself start to drool as he imagined the firepower these things must have.

A gasp came from somewhere off to his right. Jolted out of his contemplation of the fighter he looked in the direction the gasp had come from…

…and froze.

Standing there was Rick. He was dressed in a white and red uniform of the same style as Lisa and Max's though his had a high collared black jacket-like cloak over the top. Like Lisa's his uniform had the rank stars of an admiral albeit a vice admiral. He noticed two things immediately first was Rick had aged quite well in comparison to the last time he'd seen him, despite appearing to be in his early thirties he looked almost the same though his features were slightly sharper, the second was the look Rick was giving him – the look like someone who'd seen a ghost.

For a timeless moment they just stood there gazing at one another, the world around them seeming having faded away to nothing leaving just the two of them standing there in space. Then Rick just moved, and suddenly Roy found himself pulled into a desperate hug. And it was then that he truly accepted that in the time Rick, Lisa and Max were from that he was dead. He could feel the desperation and need to confirm that he was really here, that he wasn't a ghost or some other such apparition, in the way Rick was holding him.

He found he couldn't say anything – what did you say, what could you say in this kind of situation – so he did the only thing he could. He just hugged Rick right back. After a few moments he felt Rick begin to pull back. He allowed him to and for a few timeless moments their eyes met, Rick's eyes – shining with unshed tears – communicating without needing words that the two of them needed to talk later. Roy nodded in agreement then watched as a very military mask slid over his brother in everything but blood's face. The senior officer he'd apparently become taking over. He couldn't help but feel a sense of both wonderment and pride at that, he'd known Rick would go far in the RDF, he was a good pilot and an even better squadron leader, but to get that far so young was amazing.

Lisa choose that moment to speak, seeing herself Rick slipping into full military mode so the emotions stirred up by seeing Roy again wouldn't impair his performance during the current mystery they were facing. She couldn't help but be extremely proud of him and how he'd changed from the arrogant, cocky young adult she'd first met into a confident and thoughtful man – though there were times some of the old pilot's attitude showed and Rick still liked to fly a veritech whenever his duties permitted him to. Indeed when going planet side he preferred to take a veritech instead of a shuttle whenever possible. Which had saved his life a few times recently when marauding Invid loyal to the Regent had tried to kill him – only to find out just why Rick was still considered to be, next to Max and Miriya Sterling, one of the finest combat pilots in the RDF.

"Is everyone here now," she asked.

"Not quite, Lisa," Rick replied checking his watch/wrist computer which still showed one transponder approaching. In fact whoever it was they were walking around the perimeter of the building site probably looking for a way in. "The last contact's outside trying to find a way in here."

"Sir, Ma'am do you want me to go get him," Scott asked.

"If you would, Commander," Lisa replied.

Scott nodded and hopped back onto his Cyclone from where he'd been quietly talking to Ariel, filling her in on Sera's presence and where she'd gone, before driving off into the darkness of the night. After a couple of minutes he returned – with Doctor Emil Lang sat on the back of the transformable, armed motorcycle.

"Doctor Lang," Lisa said in greeting as Scott brought his Cyclone to a stop and got off. "It's good to see you despite the situation were in."

"It's good to see you too, Lisa," Lang replied in his normal thick German accent. "Do you know what's going on by any chance? As my last memory before waking up here was talking with Cabell and Rem about the exact physics of hyperspace folding."

"We all appear to have become caught up in a space-time distortion of some kind," Lisa replied before quickly and concisely filling the German genius who understood more about robotechnology than any other human alive on what they knew so far. And the plan to take the fighters up to the orbiting, seemingly abandoned, SDF-3.

"I see that does seem like a logical course of action to take," Lang agreed. "The Beta fighters should be able to accommodate all of us who aren't pilots. But we might have to leave the Cyclones behind."

"No need for that, doc," Rand broke in prompting everyone to look over. To see the three Cyclone riders had somehow been able to collapse their machines down into easy to transport cubes. At the looks they were getting Scott explained.

"In our time all veritechs carry Cyclones as emergency vehicles in the event a pilot gets shot down," he said with a smile even as he squatted down and picked his up. "They're designed to fold up like this to fit into the small cargo compartment of the Alpha fighter."

"Ah so we did work that little problem out then," Lang mused aloud as one of the things they wanted to include in the Cyclone, which the Tornado couldn't do, was the ability to compact down easily for just the purpose Scott had said about. But the team in charge of designing that particular ability was running into a few problems getting it to work properly as while the idea was simple the actual application was anything but – it was testing their skills with robotechnology to the limits in their attempts to solve the problem.

"Looks like it," Lisa agreed. "Alright you three load those into the cargo compartments of three of the Alpha's. Then we'll head up to the ship."

"Understood ma'am," Scott replied.

"In the meantime the rest of us should get aboard, I already sent Minmei to sit down in the back of the lead fighters Beta," Rick said. Lisa nodded in agreement seeing the sense in that as well as in Rick sending Minmei into the Beta where she'd be safe. Not for the first time she was glad the love triangle between the three of them had been resolved, it had enabled her to start a friendship with the singer. Which had been somewhat of an eye opening experience for both of them.

Immediately after she nodded Rick, Roy and Max headed for the cockpits of three of the Alpha fighters, hopping in with ease before strapping themselves into the seats. Roy for his part looking curiously at the slight changes made to the cockpit layout in relation to the VF-1 Valkyrie. The controls looked more or less the same though the overcomplicated mode-switch panel had changed to a single three position throttle-like lever. There were also fewer manual switches and dials with instead the functions being displayed on the touch screen displays, in addition the throttle markings indicated that the Alpha had VTOL capability that unlike the Valkyrie wasn't dependent on partially shifting the fighter to guardian mode to use. _Nice,_ he thought as he finished familiarising himself with the new control layout.

"Oh this is going to be a joy to fly," he said softly as he closed the cockpit canopy. Immediately it locked into place and sealed with a green light appearing on one of the panels showing a good seal. He carefully checked all his controls for functionality and was satisfied that they were all working as they should, before sitting back to wait for the order to take off.

He didn't have to wait long as Rick's face abruptly appeared on the comm. screen. "All right everyone we're ready," he ordered slipping into the squadron leader role with an effortless ease that made Roy smile and once more feel more than a small sliver of pride in how his adoptive younger sibling had turned out. "Engage your VTOL jets until we reach two thousand feet then set course for the SDF-3 and engage main drives."

"Understood, little brother," Roy replied a slight smirk on his face before he moved the throttle into the VTOL position, while hearing the other pilots also acknowledging the order albeit a bit more formally than he had in all but two cases.

Immediately a rumble filled the fighter as on the underside of the paired Alpha/Beta fighter VTOL jets burst into life with a flare of energy. Pulling back on the control column slightly Roy felt as much as saw the fighter beginning to slowly, but with increasing speed, begin to rise into the night sky. He kept his eyes firmly on the altitude indicator as the fighter ascended higher and higher.

In no time at all he reached two thousand feet. Pulling back on the control column more he brought the nose up, before sliding the throttle forward to max power. Instantly G forces pulled him back against the seat as with a flare of brilliant light the main engines to the docked/slaved Beta fighter burst into life. The currently merged fighter shot forward like a spooked rabbit, causing a sonic boom to echo across Sunnydale as its speed quickly passing Mach 1 and continued to both accelerate and climb.

All around him the other fighters were performing the exact same manoeuvre at the same rate of speed and incredible acceleration. All six Alpha/Beta combined fighters heading towards orbit, the seemingly abandoned SDF-3…

…and unknowing an encounter with a destiny greater than any they had face before.

* * *

Authors Notes: I was originally going to have SG-1 make an appearance in this chapter but the events in Sunnydale kind of took on a life of their own, before I knew it I had 6656 words worth, so I decided to leave them out until the next chapter.

Before anyone asks about the three vampires that attacked Lisa/Buffy at the start of the chapter I added them as I've always thought it odd that of all the bloodsuckers in Sunnydale only Spike came out to investigate the chaos visited on the town – and the Scoobies – by Ethan Rayne and try to take advantage of it to kill the affected Slayer. So I changed it I hope no one minds.

As for the effects of lasers on vampires, when the one child/demon Rick hit in the previous chapter was only mildly burned and knocked on its ass, I would ask everyone to bear in mind that Buffy vampires are canonically extremely flammable. As such the intense heat of a laser beam would be more than enough to set them aflame.


	4. Chapter 4

**Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn**

Disclaimer: I still don't own these characters.

* * *

**Chapter Four**

**Apophis's Ha'tak**

**A Few Minutes Later**

"My lord."

At the sound of his new First Prime's voice, Apophis looked up from his pel'tac throne where he had been quietly entertaining himself with thoughts of the divine vengeance he would soon inflict upon the homeworld of the loathsome Tau'ri. For their insolence, he would soon see their world burned to ashes, with any survivors rounded up to be sent to his naquada and trinium mines, which were always hungry for new sources of slave labour, wspecially now with his campaign to replace the much unlamented Ra as Supreme System Lord entering a critical phase. He had to admit, he'd found the idea of the Tau'ri – the very humans who'd killed Ra – serving him, helping him rise to the top of the Goa'uld hierarchy to be a very nice form of poetic justice.

Thus, he was somewhat irked at his fantasising being disturbed. **"Speak,"** he ordered tightly at the trembling Jaffa. Good, the fool had realised he'd irritated his god with the interruption and had better have a good reason for it.

"Forgive me for disturbing you, my lord, but our long range sensors are picking up a large anomalous contact in orbit over the Tau'ri homeworld," the Jaffa – Eu'teh Apophis believed his name to be – reported.

Despite his irritation, Apophis was intrigued. **"What kind of contact?"** he asked, raising one of his host's perfectly manicured eyebrows to show his interest.

"We believe it to be a ship, my lord," Eu'teh replied, "one that out-masses both Ha'taks by a considerable margin. The vessel's configuration and power signature does not match anything in our database."

"**Hmm,"** Apophis mused, wondering as to what the mystery vessel's identity could be. And given its size, whether it posed a threat to his motherships and his plans to rain superheated plasma down upon the world that had caused him so many headaches over the last year. He decided that a little caution was called for, especially given the Tau'ri had shown themselves to be a very cunning and dangerous adversary on numerous occasions. He still hadn't figured out how they'd been able to subvert Teal'c when they'd first come to Chulak.

"**Dispatch a squadron of Al'kesh," **he ordered at last. **"Order them to approach and conduct detailed scans of the unknown vessel. If possible, they are to attempt to board and capture the vessel in the name of their god. If that proves impossible, they are to engage and destroy it. In the meantime, reduce our speed to one quarter thrust. Instruct my son's Ha'tak to do the same."**

"It shall be done, my lord," Eu'teh replied with a deep bow of respect to his liege before turning back to the main console to relay the order to both the Al'kesh launch bays and their companion Ha'tak.

For his part, Apophis leaned back thoughtfully against the backrest of his throne. The appearance of this massive and unknown vessel in orbit of the Tau'ri homeworld was an interesting development. He had to wonder who it belonged to – he doubted the Tau'ri had built it, as while their technology was moderately advanced by human standards, it wasn't anywhere near capable of building interstellar spacecraft, especially spacecraft of any significant size – and how closely they were aligned with the Tau'ri. Had whoever they were learned that he was planning to attack the Tau'ri homeworld and dispatched this ship to ensure he failed?

It was a very real possibility, though if that was indeed the case, then, whoever this mystery race was, they were either very confident, very foolish, or both. After all, there were very few vessels this side of an Asgard battlecruiser that could take on and defeat even one Goa'uld Ha'tak, let alone two.

After a few more moments' thought, he shrugged mentally. Whoever that ship belonged to and whatever its reasons for being here were, he would know soon enough. If the ship's builders were wise, they would surrender to either his Al'kesh or his motherships when they entered weapons range; if not, he'd destroy their vessel and learn who'd dared to attempt to stand in his way from the wreckage, after which he would take great pleasure in conquering said race's homeworld and incorporating any useful technologies they had into his own.

_Maybe there's another way to get some information on the ship,_ he thought recalling a report Klorel had made a short time ago. The traitor Teal'c and the Tau'ri called O'Neill who'd so successfully subverted his First Prime had been captured aboard his ship. His first instinct upon seeing them had been to order Teal'c to be relieved of his prim'tah and for O'Neill to be made to watch as the shol'vah died slowly and painfully as bodily functions supported by the juvenile Goa'uld broke down. But he'd clamped down on that impulse and ordered Klorel to toss them both in a cell so he could deal with them at his leisure.

"**Jaffa,"** he ordered prompting Eu'teh to turn to face him again, bowing in anticipation of his gods next orders. **"Contact my son's Ha'tak. Instruct Klorel that he is to interrogate the shol'vah Teal'c and the Tau'ri O'Neill for any information they have on the vessel over their homeworld. And make it clear that I want that information as soon as possible."**

"It shall be done, my lord."

* * *

**Stargate Command**

**A Few Minutes Later**

Major General George Hammond returned with a grim certainty to the SGC's main control room from his office where the joint chiefs and the president had been bringing him up to speed on the preparations for the Goa'uld attack they now knew was coming. Military units around the country were beginning to mobilise in preparation for the inevitable ground attack, while squadrons of Air Force F-16s and Navy F-18s were preparing to move into position to intercept any glider squadrons the Goa'uld sent down ahead of whatever they used in the way of troop transports.

On one hand, it was good to see the US military machine swinging smoothly into action, ready to counter the imminent threat, but on the other hand, that mobilisation had sown the seeds of a problem. The media had been quick to pick up that something was going on, something big that had kicked over a hornet's nest in military bases around the country, and they were filling the airways with rampant speculation as to what that something was. So far, they were buying that it was a planned readiness exercise, but who knew how long that would last? Already, some of the more suspicious reporters were asking very pointed questions and making life difficult for the Pentagon's press liaison officers. It was only a matter of time before someone broke the story that the mobilisation was not the result of a pre-planned exercise.

As if the media bloodhounds weren't bad enough, the sudden upsurge in military activity had been, inevitably, noticed by the other nations and was being very sharply and insistently queried at the highest levels. Even staunch allies like the British premier were practically demanding to know what the US military was up to. So far, the president had been able to keep a lid on things, but that would last even less time than the cover story with the media would. Already, there had been signs that other national militaries – including the British military as well as the militaries of other NATO members and, unfortunately, the Russians and Chinese – were going to an increasing state of alertness themselves in response to the US military's actions.

Again, the reaction was a two-edged sword. On one hand, if any Goa'uld gliders penetrated the atmosphere over those countries, then the Jaffa could expect to be challenged immediately by fighters from national air forces – not to mention get painted by the targeting systems of surface-to-air missile batteries – but on the other, it laid the foundations for one hell of a political headache later on.

_If we survive this attack, politically, there's going to be hell to pay,_ he thought, knowing the president and state department were going to be in for a political hammering even from their allies. Especially as there would be no real way to cover up that they'd been attacked from space – especially if other nations military forces ended up shooting holes in Goa'uld fighters, fighters whose very design said 'alien' in big bold letters – and that the sudden upsurge of US military activity had been in readiness to attempt to repel it. Which would lead to all sorts of questions about how they knew it was coming and who exactly their alien enemy was? Questions that would be extremely hard to answer without revealing the existence of the Stargate Program, which would open another particularly big can of political worms – none of the other nations would be pleased to learn that they'd kept knowledge of the stargate and, with it, the Goa'uld threat from them.

Shrugging off those thoughts for now - there would be time to think of that if they survived - he focused on the here and now. The control room had become a beehive of activity, with personnel hurriedly coordinating preparations while also preparing to send forces through the gate to properly secure the Alpha site in preparation for the arrival of the first evacuation parties. Parties that would ensure that even if Earth was destroyed by the Goa'uld, some of their people and culture would survive to one day take the fight back to them.

"What's our status?" he ordered.

"Sir, SG teams Two, Three, and Four report they are almost ready to go through the 'gate to the Alpha site," Sergeant Harriman reported. "The first of the evacuation parties will reach the mountain in approximately two and a half hours."

"That's not going to give us a lot of time to secure the Alpha site," George mused aloud though he knew they'd manage it, just. "What about the Goa'uld ships? Are they still incoming?"

"Yes, sir, they are. However, deep space radar has noticed that the Goa'uld ships have substantially reduced their speed and will now only reach Earth orbit in just under six hours. Concurrent with their reduction in speed was the launch of four smaller vessels from one of the ships; the smaller ships are heading our way at very high speed. From their size and speed, they're not gliders; deep space radar believes they're likely to be some kind of long range scout or recon vehicles."

George frowned at that, as it was a very smart move on behalf of the Goa'uld, to send out a group of smaller advanced recon units before their main ships arrived over Earth, units that could scan the planet and locate all major defence and communications installations for the capital ships to take out once they arrived. It was kind of like the way they used drones and satellites to recon an area before sending their own forces into combat. _But then, never let it be said that the Goa'uld are stupid,_ he thought. _Arrogant, yes; lovers of overly melodramatic statements, yes; evil to the core, yes; stupid, not so much. They wouldn't have the empire they do if they didn't have the ability to think and act tactically when they want – and need – to._

"How long until they arrive?" he asked.

"Approximately fifteen minutes, sir; all forces are being put on standby to intercept them if they attempt to enter the atmosphere."

"I see. Now what about the alien ship over California? Has there been any change in its behaviour?"

"Negative, sir. The ship hasn't moved an inch. It's maintaining its geostationary orbit over the town of Sunnydale, but we are picking up several small contacts approaching the vessel, apparently launched from Sunnydale. From the size and speed, they're likely to be some kind of shuttles or fighters. The first will reach the vessel in approximately three minutes, the other six about five minutes after that."

George frowned, not liking the sound of that, particularly how they'd apparently launched from Sunnydale. Was whoever on those shuttles or whatever they were the reason the ship was here? Had it come to evacuate them before the Goa'uld began their assault on the planet? "Have we still been unable to make contact with them?" he asked, referring to the orbiting ship.

"Yes, sir. We've continued broadcasting on all radio channels, but nobody is answering. It's possible that, whoever they are, they either cannot receive or just cannot understand our transmissions."

_Or they're deliberately ignoring us,_ George thought, knowing that either scenario was a very real possibility. Unfortunately, the silence of the alien vessel over California presented another problem, as there were a number of fellow officers in the Pentagon – no doubt encouraged by people like Colonel Maybourne and his NID flunkies – who were of the opinion that the vessel was indeed connected to the incoming Goa'uld ships, that its appearance was too coincidental to not be linked, and that as such, they should target it with some ICBMs and blow it out of the sky.

So far he – and a few other like-minded senior officers – had been able to convince the president not to order such an action, pointing out that the ship might not be related or have hostile intentions. And reminding everyone – especially the more gung-ho officers – that from that position, the ship, if it had been hostile, could have already decimated not just the most populous and richest state in the union, but the entire west coast from California all the way up to Alaska. It had bought some time, with the president ordering communications attempts to continue. But the longer the vessel remained silent, the weaker their position got. Eventually, the 'blow it out of the sky' camp would win and convince the president to order a strike upon the California vessel, and there was something telling him that that would not be a very good idea.

"Keep trying to make contact with them," he ordered after a few moments of silent thought and prayer that whoever the aliens were they'd respond to their hails soon.

"Yes, sir."

* * *

**Klorel's Ha'tak**

**That Same Time**

Colonel Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill resisted, just, the impulse to pace around the cell that Klorel's Jaffa had flung him and Teal'c into. He couldn't help but curse to himself as he'd been so convinced he'd be able to reach Skaara, be able to somehow give him the strength to break free of the control of the Goa'uld symbiote inside of him. It had almost worked, but in the end, Klorel had been far too strong; even using a zat blast had only worked for a few seconds while the symbiote fought off the pain and disorientation of the blast.

As a result, he and Teal'c had been hauled before that giant tele-ball thing filling the stargate and come face-to-face so to speak with Apophis himself. After a bit of a one-sided chat with the lead snakehead, he and Teal'c had been thrown in here to await whatever fate Apophis designed for them. Inwardly, he sighed, wondering why he'd bothered; he should have known that Klorel wouldn't be able to be overwhelmed by his host so easily. He knew the answer; it had been a blind hope, a blind faith that Skaara would be strong enough to overpower the thing controlling him. Now, for the first time, he found himself truly understanding how helpless Daniel must feel knowing that not only was his brother-in-law in the horrible position of being essentially a prisoner in his own body, but his wife as well. Assuming they survived this, he made a mental note to talk to his friend later about it all.

The familiar metallic clanking of Jaffa boots on the deck brought him out of his thoughts, as they seemed to be coming this way. He turned to look at the door. From where he'd been quietly meditating, Teal'c did the same. A moment later, with a grinding sound, the marble-like metal of the door opened, and three Jaffa marched in. Two were wearing the by now all too familiar cobra-like helmets, but the third was wearing just a metallic skull cap – he also had a silver version of the gold-filled tattoo Teal'c had on his forehead.

"Lord Klorel demands your presence in the pel'tac," the silver-mark wearing Jaffa said in an imperious tone of voice as he looked at Jack. "You will come with us now," he also glanced at Teal'c and a brief sneer appeared on his face. "You too, shol'vah."

Jack didn't reply in words. Instead, he merely folded his arms and glared at the trio of Jaffa, defiance practically oozing out of the pores of his skin. He had no intention of letting the Goa'uld inside his friend order him about like he was one of his slaves, even if it was a few Jaffa giving the orders on Klorel's behalf. The leading Jaffa merely sighed and unclipped his zat'nik'atel from its slot on his gauntlet and opened it to firing position.

"You will come with us voluntarily, or I will knock you out and drag you," he said. "You'll only make it worse on yourself as Lord Klorel will not be forgiving about being made to wait while you regain consciousness."

Jack glared back and started to open his mouth to emit a sarcastic comment about how the overdressed snake controlling his friend could kiss his ass… but before any sound could emerge from his throat, a lance of crackling blue lightning struck one of the Serpent Guards. The Jaffa in question howled in a combination of pain, surprise, and fury as the zat discharge crackled over his armour like some bizarre spontaneous occurrence of St Elmo's fire. A second blast struck the Jaffa, and he crumpled to the ground dead.

The other Serpent Guard and the silver-tattooed Jaffa started to turn to face their attackers, but before they got even halfway around, two more streams of the lightning-like discharges of zat'nik'atel weapons filled their air, striking both, their screams filling the air even as more blasts struck them before they joined their compatriot as lifeless corpses littering the deck.

A second later, Sam and Daniel appeared in the doorway.

Jack grinned. "Nice timing," he said.

"You're welcome, sir," Sam replied as Jack went over to one of the dead Jaffa, squatted down and retrieved the zat gun; it would have to do as a weapon as his own had been confiscated by the Jaffa. He had no idea where they were now. "Sir, we've come out of hyperspace," Sam added filling Jack in on what seemed to be going on. "We're in the solar system and are just passing Jupiter; we saw it out one of the view ports."

"I thought you said we wouldn't reach Earth for at least a year?!" Jack exclaimed, more than a little shocked to learn they were in their own solar system already. _Though why come out of hyperspace this far out in the system?_ he thought idly. _Unless they want to terrify us with their approach and the inevitability of our destruction at their hands, which I certainly wouldn't put past the snakeheads._

"I think it's obvious by now, sir, that this ship can go a lot faster than ten times the speed of light," Sam replied.

"I have never been aboard a Goa'uld vessel capable of such speeds," Teal'c admitted, "though I do recall that the Ha'taks of the false god Ra were reportedly considerably faster than those of the other System Lords. With the collapse of his domain following his death…"

"…a few of the more advanced ships likely fell into Apophis' hands," Sam finished for him. "From there, it probably wouldn't take him long to reverse engineer the more advanced hyperspace technology."

"Oh," Jack replied inwardly wincing as he realised it made sense, too much sense. "Captain, did you place C4 charges where they'll be able to create a dent?" he asked getting back to the mission. They needed to destroy this ship before it reached Earth orbit and started raining energy blasts down on defenceless cities.

Sam nodded. "We placed charges where they should generate secondary explosions, so yes, sir, it should make one hell of a dent," she replied, then paused, not wanting to spill the bad news that she and Daniel had spotted out the same view port that they'd seen Jupiter through. "But it's not going to help, sir."

"Why not?" Jack asked, then groaned as he realised. "There's more than one ship, isn't there?"

"At least one more," Daniel confirmed sounding grim.

"Damn it. Teal'c, if we blow up this ship, will it take out the other one?"

"It would not," Teal'c replied with his normal stoicism. "Apophis's ship – like all Ha'taks – is protected by defence shields; he would therefore still be able to rain destruction on your cities from high above even if this ship is destroyed."

"Oh, for crying out loud! Why didn't you tell us there would be another ship?"

"I was not certain there would be, O'Neill. It is highly unusual for more than one Ha'tak to be dispatched on a mission such as this one," Teal'c explained recalling that few ships save another Ha'tak – or the near mythical Asgard battlecruisers – could successfully engage and destroy a Goa'uld mothership. Thus the Goa'uld generally only sent one Ha'tak on missions like this.

"Great, so we need to somehow take out the other ship as well," Jack mused. "If we could find and take the bridge, could we use this ship's weapons to take out the other one?"

"Possibly, O'Neill, especially if we were able to get in a good first strike. At the very least, we might be able to cause enough damage that Apophis would withdraw," Teal'c said looking as thoughtful as the big Jaffa ever did. "However, reaching the pel'tac will prove difficult. There will be a great many Jaffa between here and there."

"We're going to have to chance it," Jack replied as he led them out of the cell and into the corridor. "Which way to the bridge level, Teal'c?"

"The pel'tac is this way, O'Neill," Teal'c answered pointing to the left.

"All right. Let's move it, people."

"Right behind you, sir," Sam acknowledged before the reunited members of SG-1 ran back in the labyrinthine corridors of the Goa'uld mothership.

* * *

**SDF-3**

**That Same Time**

_It's eerie,_ Rick thought as he carefully climbed out of the Alpha's cockpit and gazed around at the hangar they'd been automatically drawn into after landing in one of the _Pioneer's_ portside landing bays. Normally - between pilots, flight engineers, and armourers - the hangar would have been a literal beehive of activity as well as a cacophony of machine- and human-generated noise.

But not now.

Instead, an unnatural silence, like a graveyard at midnight, prevailed. The people who would normally be working here were missing, as if they'd never been present at all. The only sounds that could be heard in the cavernous bay were the sounds of everyone's boots on the composite alloy deck and the normal background sounds of the ship itself. He would almost have believed nobody had been in this particular hanger at all – except for the fact that various veritech mecha were all in their maintenance bays, with some even having open access panels and work carts near them.

"Where is everybody?" Max wondered, his voice sounding especially loud in the bay as he approached. "There should be more than a hundred people working in here at any given time."

"I have no idea," Rick admitted. "It's almost like everyone just stopped what they were doing and left."

"But where could they have gone?" Roy wondered as the rest of their odd little party gathered around. "Maybe there was some kind of emergency that required them to evacuate?"

"That is unlikely," Sera answered. "While I was waiting for your veritechs to arrive, I did a thorough flyby. I paid special attention to all the launch tubes for both fighters and escape craft."

"Find anything?" Scott asked he was more than a little creeped out by how silent the bay was beyond the faint swish of the air vents and the distant, almost inaudible rumbling of the ship's reflex furnaces.

"No," Sera admitted. "All the launch tubes remain closed and sealed."

"Could the ship be caught in the same space-time distortion as us?" Rook asked. "Maybe there's nobody here because there was nobody aboard the ship in the time it comes from."

"I suppose it is possible, but it is most unlikely," Doctor Lang commented. "The _Pioneer_ has never been entirely unmanned, even during the earliest stages of her construction. Even if the ship was from an earlier point in the timeline to some of us, our approach would have been detected and a security party dispatched to greet us."

"Maybe we should make our way up to the bridge," Roy suggested. "Maybe we'll be able to get some answers from the computers there."

"At very least we'd be able to find out what happened to the crew," Lisa agreed.

"How long will it take to get to the bridge from here?" Ariel asked.

"About ten minutes," Lisa answered. "We are, after all, three hundred meters forward of and twelve decks below the command citadel."

Ariel exchanged a look with Sera, who nodded in agreement. "There is a faster way to the bridge," she said with a slight, mysterious smile before both human-form Invid began to glow with a golden light. Simultaneously, both women's hair began to wave as if in a breeze.

Rick frowned and started to open his mouth to ask what they were doing when the golden light coming off the two young women expanded, enveloping all of them. A strange tingling sensation filled him along with a faint hint of tension – as if the matter that made up his body was suddenly being put under some kind of strain – as the hangar bay faded away. For a few moments, he saw nothing but the golden light…

…then, amazingly, a new room began to form around them. The light brightened still further 'til it was almost blinding. Then it vanished, and he couldn't help but look around in shock as he saw they weren't in the hangar bay anymore but standing on the expansive bridge of the SDF-3.

"Whoa," Rand said stumbling before looking at Ariel and Sera in surprise. "I knew you could do that, but experiencing it is just…"

"…wow, I know," Scott confirmed with a smile.

"What was that?" Lisa demanded, turning to look at the two very human-like aliens, as that experience was completely unlike anything she'd seen from the Invid before. While militarily powerful, the Invid she'd fought had all used conventional means to get about: they walked or – in the case of going from ship to surface or vice versa – used shuttlecraft.

"Ariel and Sera are stage five Invid, ma'am," Scott explained. "It gives them a number of advanced matter-energy manipulation abilities. Teleportation is just one of them."

Lisa raised an eyebrow and started to open her mouth to ask what other abilities to two Invid possessed. However, before any sound could emerge, alarms went off from a number of the bridge consoles.

"What's that?" Rand asked, looking around at the various stations in a mixture of alarm and curiosity: curiosity because he'd never actually been aboard a functioning starship before, he couldn't help but be surprised by how spacious it was; alarmed because of that insistent alert coming from a number of consoles.

"Perimeter alert," Scott explained as he moved over to the closest sensor console to see what the problem was, what potential threat had tripped the ship's perimeter sensors. "Uh oh," he said as he saw what the problem was. "Sensors have picked up four unknown vessels approaching from out system; they've just crossed into our weapons range. Configuration unknown. Whatever they are, they're coming straight for us."

"Time to intercept?" Lisa asked.

"Two minutes, ma'am," Scott replied scanning the screens. "They're changing their approach vector slightly. I believe they're going to attempt to access one of the port landing bays."

Lisa's green eyes narrowed slightly. She did not like the idea that someone she didn't know was about to attempt to board her ship. "Close and seal the landing bays," she said prompting Rick to move over to one of the operations consoles and give the command.

"Landing bays closing and sealing, Lisa," he said as the lights on the console indicating the open bay doors began changing from green, to amber, to red as the bays began to close and seal themselves up.

"Maybe we should try contacting them," Minmei suggested. "For all we know, they could have been trying to contact us for a while but haven't been able to get through."

"Possible," Lisa agreed looking over at the singer/former romantic rival, to see she'd set herself down at one of the comm. stations. "Do you think you'll be able to open a channel to them, Minmei?"

Minmei nodded. She'd long since learned how to operate a communications set up; it had been something the manager she'd hired after Kyle insisted she learn how to do, especially given how often she seemed to get kidnapped by renegade Zentraedi. "I can," she confirmed.

"Do so please."

"Of course," Minmei replied half a second before there came a distant thud – like a heavy door being slammed – and a faint but noticeable shiver ran through the deck. A second and third thud, each accompanied by their own slight oscillation in the ships artificial gravity field, followed almost instantly, then a fourth. Instantly, the bridge was filled with noise as klaxons went off, summoning the currently near non-existent crew to battle stations.

"We're being fired on," Scott reported as everyone scrambled to man a station so they could fight back against the unexpected and unprovoked attack. "The alien craft are making runs at our portside landing bays and are dropping plasma charges. They're probably trying to blow open the doors; the armour on the bay doors is holding for now."

"Secondary weapons and point defence grid coming online," Rick reported.

"Activate pinpoint barriers, set for automatic interception," Lisa ordered, taking command of the situation as the ranking officer present. A fresh round of thuds and muted shockwaves rippled through the ship as the alien craft continued their attack. "Return fire."

* * *

The four Al'kesh launched earlier from the distant Goa'uld flagship banked and came around for a third bombing run against the unknown alien ship's landing bay doors. Their sensors had shown that, while incredibly strong, the unknown metallic alloy that made up the armoured doors was starting to weaken – it would buckle soon, then the Al'kesh would be able to land and the Jaffa aboard them disembark to attempt to claim the unknown vessel in the name of the great god Apophis.

Lining up, the first of the Al'kesh began its run.

And ran into an unexpected wall of energy bolts and beams as the SDF-3's port lateral weapons arrays opened fire, practically filling space with bright blue javelins of compressed, supercharged protons and the smaller, more numerous bright yellow pulses of laser fire. The first Al'kesh took the blasting full on, its shields flaring briefly before buckling, allowing the beams and pulses to savage the ship, instantly turning it into a hazy plume of rapidly dissipating, dissociated ions.

The three remaining Al'kesh immediately began taking evasive action, even as the ventral plasma turret that was their main anti-ship armament began firing dual pulses at the SDF-3. Powerful pulses of superheated, super dense plasma shot forth ahead of the Al'kesh as they tried to adapt to counter the sudden deluge of defensive fire.

Their attack proved ineffective as, to the Jaffa's shock, a softly glowing yellow-green disc appeared right in the path of their plasma assault. The pulses shattered on impact, breaking apart in a blaze of golden sparks that rapidly dissipated in space. But while the Jaffa's attack proved less than successful, the same could not be said for the next volley of defensive fire from the _Pioneer's_ lateral weapons.

Two of the three were hit immediately, one taking multiple particle beams that ripped through its shields like they weren't there to slice the craft apart. The second was slightly more fortunate than its companion as although the rapidly jinking Jaffa pilot successfully evaded the particle beams, in doing so, he ran straight into a vicious pulsed laser barrage.

The Al'kesh shields flared, sparked, and sagged under the laser assault but held, just, some energy crackling through the shield grid to scorch and render the hull. Wounded, the Al'kesh attempted to veer off, only to run straight into the path of a beam that sliced it cleanly in two.

The remaining Al'kesh paused, the Jaffa crew stunned by the fact that in mere seconds two more of their number and with them dozens of brother Jaffa had been annihilated. The hesitation cost them dearly as multiple particle beams from three separate cannon arrays converged on the ship, as before, ignoring its shields to cut into then through the whole of the mid-range attack ship's hull, with the predictable result of the ship turning into a fireball as its fatally damaged naquada reactor core let go.

The fireball died within moments, leaving the SDF-3 once again alone in orbit above California.

* * *

**Bridge**

**SDF-3 Pioneer**

Lisa sighed softly as she observed the destruction of the last of the attacking alien ships. She didn't understand what the alien commander had been thinking in attempting to continue with the attack on their landing bays. There was no way that four small vessels would have anywhere near the firepower needed to inflict serious damage to the _Pioneer_; like all battle fortresses, the SDF-3's armour had been designed to withstand fire from far more powerful and damaging opponents than those four little vessels. The alien's sensors had to have told them that they were massively outgunned, and as such, their weapons had little to no chance of damaging, let alone breaching the ship's thickly armoured hide before they were destroyed.

"So why did they attack us?" she mused aloud. "They had to have known that they lacked the power needed to damage, let alone destroy us."

"They could be fanatics," Roy pointed out turning his chair to look at her. "We both know, Lisa, that fanatics of any sort aren't exactly the most rational or sane beings in creation."

"You may be right," Lisa admitted recalling the actions of various extremist groups on Earth before the Rain of Death. Like many of her generation, she'd had a few unfortunate experiences at their hands, especially from the Anti-Unification League after the formation of the United Earth Government.

"Roy probably is," Rick agreed. "But now that that little fracas is taken care of, maybe we should get back to finding out what the hell happened to the crew."

Lisa nodded in agreement with her husband. She started to open her mouth to suggest that they check the ship's log, as any major event that would require the crew to somehow leave the ship without using the escape pods would have been automatically recorded there. Before she could speak, however, there came a deep, rumbling boom, as though a million bass drums were being hit all at once, and the ship shook violently.

"Report," she ordered as gravitational stability returned.

"Two large alien vessels just exited some sort of spatial distortion directly ahead," Scott reported sounding worried. "That jolt was a pair of plasma blasts striking the hull. Pinpoint's absorbed the worst of the blasts, no damage."

"We're being hailed, Lisa," Minmei added. "Audio and visual."

"Show me," Lisa instructed and watched as a holographic display shimmered into existence in front of her, showing her the bridge of what was clearly one of the alien ships.

It was a truly bizarre sight.

Standing at three consoles were humans – or at least human-like aliens – dressed in what looked like chainmail of all things. Each wore a metal skull-cap, and two of the three had black tattoos in the shape of a stylized serpent on their foreheads. The third, the one standing at the central console, appeared to have a golden tattoo of the same design on his forehead. Behind him on a raised dais, an African male in a golden version of the chainmail sat on an ornate throne. The rest of the bridge had a vaguely tetrahedral look to it, with walls of gold encrusted with what looked like old Egyptian hieroglyphs. But most bizarrely of all were the fact that there were a number of braziers around the sides of the bridge making it look more like something that belonged in the tomb or throne room of some ancient king instead of the bridge of an interstellar spaceship.

"**Unknown vessel,"** the African-looking man said in an odd resonant voice that didn't sound even remotely human, a voice that sent a real shiver down Lisa's spine at the sheer unnaturalness of it. **"I am the great god Apophis. You have just destroyed vessels attempting to carry out my divine will. Surrender your vessel to me now, and I shall be merciful."**

Lisa blinked at the sheer arrogance that she could hear resonating in that voice. "Apophis, I am Admiral Lisa Hayes commander of the SDF-3 _Pioneer_," she replied. "Your vessels fired upon us first; we merely defended ourselves."

"**It matters not, Admiral Hayes,"** Apophis answered. **"Surrender, and I promise I will be merciful. If you do not, then you will face my wrath as surely as the world below you will for their own insolence against me."**

Lisa's eyes narrowed and her green eyes sparkled dangerously at the threat to Earth. "I will not allow you to attack Earth," she said in warning.

"**You cannot stop me, and I grow tired of this conversation. What is your answer? Do you surrender?"**

"I will not. Nor will I allow you to harm Earth. Leave now, and I won't destroy your ships."

Apophis laughed. **"You really think you can stop a god?"** he questioned. **"Your insolence is amusing… and futile. I offered you a chance to live and you refused so now you will face my wrath. Kree Jaffa."**

Apophis image disappeared from the screen, prompting the hologram to shimmer and change to show a tactical view of the two large tetrahedral ships facing them head on…

…a moment later, they fired.

* * *

**Authors Note: Ooh cliff-hanger – evil aren't I people.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Ship of the Line: Pioneers Dawn**

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately I still don't own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement – rotten luck I know.**

* * *

**Chapter Five**

**Stargate Command**

**A Few Minutes Earlier**

"Sir near orbit radar reports that the small craft launched from the Goa'uld flagship have entered orbit."

At the sound of Walter's voice George Hammond immediately turned from where he had been discussing the order for transferring medical staff to the Alpha Site with Doctor Fraiser. "Do we have any idea what they're doing," he asked coming up to stand behind the slightly younger man.

"Yes sir they appear to be making a beeline for the vessel over California," Walter reported, "its identity could be as big a mystery to the Goa'uld as it is to us."

_Very likely,_ George thought as he glanced up at one of the overhead screens which was showing a near orbit radar image, an image that was now centred on the large yellow chevron that identified the alien vessel still holding position in orbit. Four small red triangles representing the Goa'uld ships could clearly be seen approaching it. After a few moments they began repeatedly buzzing it in what looked to him like an attack run.

"Sir the Goa'uld craft are firing upon the vessel over California," Walter confirmed a moment later, listening to the report from near orbit radar on his headset. "We're getting a video feed from one of our orbital satellites."

"Put it through," George ordered.

Almost instantly the screen changed to show a real time video image being taken and transmitted by one of the hundreds of spy satellites the US government had deployed, covertly of course, in orbit in the forty odd years since the space race began. The massive vessel in orbit was instantly eye catching with its odd combination of blocky lines and strange almost organic-looking curves and projections. Its hull was also an odd metallic red in colour and looked to be extremely thickly armoured. _I've seen that before somewhere,_ he thought feeling an odd sense of déjà vu at the sight of it. But where had he seen it before? Whenever it was he had the distinct impression that it had been a long time ago.

He shook off the odd feeling, there would be time to figure out the mystery of the alien ships familiarity later – if they had one. Instead he paid attention to what was happening on the screen as the four Goa'uld craft – squat pyramidal things that looked somewhat like they'd been normal Egyptian-style pyramids that had been sat on by something – buzzed the ship dropping some kind of glowing yellow energy balls on the hull. Balls which while they produced small explosions didn't seem to be doing the alien vessel any harm.

A moment later the ship – apparently tiring of the Goa'uld attack – returned fire unleashing a truly blistering torrent of blue-white energy beams and yellow energy pulses from its portside weapons arrays. A barrage that in what seemed like seconds tore all four Goa'uld ships from the sky.

_Well whoever they are its obvious that they're no friends of the Goa'uld,_ he thought a little stunned by the sudden display of power. Clearly not only was the ship in orbit absolutely gigantic but it had to be literally armed to the teeth. Which meant it was good that he – and likeminded officers – had been able to keep their gung-ho colleagues from prematurely ordering a strike against it. With that level of defensive firepower available to it he doubted that any ICBM would have gotten close enough to it to deploy its warheads. _And if its defensive firepower is go great then I shudder to think what's its offensive firepower is like,_ he mused.

"Sir, report from deep space radar," Walter reported jolting him out of his thoughts and prompting him to give the other man his full attention. "The two Goa'uld warships have just vanished from where they were passing Jupiter."

George frowned but before he could open his mouth to ask a question a flash of light on the screen pulled his attention back to the satellite video feed. Just in time to see the California vessel facing off against two large black and gold tetrahedral-shaped ships. _The Goa'uld must have made a precision hyperspace jump to orbit after their scouts were destroyed,_ he thought, _the manner and speed of their destruction probably clearly communicated the threat of that ship to Apophis. Prompting this response._ He made a mental note to include in any report he might get to write on this whole incident the fact that Goa'uld warships were apparently capable of such precision jumps as the more they knew about the actual capabilities of Goa'uld capital ships the better – currently they knew next to nothing about them beyond what little Teal'c had been able to tell them.

For what seemed like an eternity nothing seemed to happen, the ships seeming to be having the space based version of a classic Mexican standoff. Then both Goa'uld ships opened fire, bright golden bolts of energy shooting forth from their weapons arrays towards the other ship. What happened next startled him and produced another feeling of déjà vu as glowing yellow-green discs of energy suddenly washed over the big red ship's hull before coming to a stop right in the path of the Goa'uld energy blasts – causing the bolts to shatter and dissipate in flashes of golden sparklers. _Where have I seen that defence before,_ he wondered.

"It can't be," he abruptly heard Doctor Fraiser say from behind him. "That ships fictional it can't be here, can't be real."

"Doctor," he asked turning to look at the short, brown haired doctor who could scare even the biggest, most battle hardened marines into obeying her. A doctor who right now had an utterly gobsmacked look on her face as she stared at the screen in disbelief. "You recognise that ship?"

"Yes sir I do but I don't understand how it could be real and here now," Janet Fraiser answered, "sir that ship is the SDF-3 Pioneer from an eighties anime series called Robotech. I know about it as Cassie watched a few episodes of the first season of the show over her friends a few weeks ago and gotten well… hooked on it sir. I had to get her the whole series on tape."

_Of course that's where I've seen it before,_ he thought. He remembered the show well his daughter had been hooked on it back when she'd been little, especially liking the strong female characters featured in the show. Characters like Lisa Hayes, Miriya Sterling and Rook Bartley though as he recalled she'd also had a soft spot for some of the male characters especially one Rick Hunter. Additional flashes of light on the screen caught his attention and he looked up…

…to see the SDF-3 was returning the Goa'uld's fire. Trio's of thick blue-white energy beams lancing out from a number of large turrets towards the Goa'uld ships. Each Ha'tak took a dozen beams each, energy barriers flaring visibly into existence around them stopping the beams from cutting into the cold metal hulls. Despite the flaring of the shields the satellites video cameras clearly showed both ships seeming to visibly shake with the impacts. The beams vanished though the shielding continued to glow, the glow was only just starting to fade when more beams lashed the shields of both vessels again putting more strain on the Goa'uld defences.

Despite the intense battering they seemed to be taking both Goa'uld warships continued firing. And it was immediately clear that the heavy volleys and salvos of plasma they were firing were starting to have some effect upon the SDF-3. The glowing yellow-green energy discs appeared to be fainter and weren't appearing as quickly to block the bolts coming from the Goa'uld weapons allowing some blasts to get through to the hull of the ship. Though so far those shots that did hit didn't appear to be doing much in the way of damage, the energy of the blasts dissipating over the hull or refracting back into space the moment they made contact.

After another exchange of beams and pulses the SDF-3 ceased firing back. Instead a glowing yellow-green bubble appeared around the entire ship blocking the Goa'uld weaponry from hitting the hull. _What are they doing now,_ George wondered remembering vaguely that they couldn't fire while they had their main shield up. Which meant they'd put it up to buy time for something. But what was it and would it be enough to defeat the attacking Goa'uld?

He supposed they would soon see.

* * *

**Bridge**

**SDF-3 Pioneer**

**A Few Moments Earlier**

Lisa held on grimly to the armrests of the command chair as the ship groaned and shook under the heavy bombardment they were taking from both alien ships. Though no real damage had been sustained yet she knew it was only a matter of time before they started losing systems. A glance at a tactical display confirmed that the forward pinpoint barrier generators were losing power – the strain of constantly having to regenerate the pinpoint barriers to repel the powerful alien plasma weapons was playing havoc with the generators power reserves. Soon they'd lose them and all the alien bolts would begin striking the hull and when that started to happen in large numbers damage would be inevitable – damage that they could ill-afford to take given there seemed to be only be a few of them aboard the ship and aside from Doctor Lang none of them were really trained in damage control. In the event of damage they would be forced to rely entirely on the ships automated systems and those could only do so much.

She started to open her mouth to request a report on the state of the hull when the dull rumbling boom of an internal explosion. "What was that," she asked.

"Two of the secondary coolant lines to the forward particle cannons just blew out," Doctor Lang reported from where he was manning the main operations station. "Minor damage only."

"Enough of this," Lisa said with a slight growl knowing damage would only mount the more hits they took. "Activate the omni-directional barrier system. Then prepare to begin the firing sequence for the reflex cannons, target both alien ships."

"With the omni-barrier up it will take just over five minutes to build up enough power to fire both cannons," Lang warned.

"I'm aware of that," Lisa replied as a diffuse green light began to filter into the bridge from the viewports as the ships main omni-directional defence barrier activated surrounding the ship in a near impenetrable wall of energy, "will the omni-barrier hold long enough?"

Lang checked his instruments for a moment, noting how powerful the alien plasma weapons were and how the barrier energy was reacting to the impacts, how much of the energy was being absorbed into the ships internal stores and how much was being spread around the perimeter of the shield to dissipate. "It will," he confirmed, "though internal energy sinks will have reached full capacity by that time."

_Meaning the shield will begin to loose cohesion unless we invert it,_ Lisa thought. "It will have to do," she replied, "if you can divert some of the excess energy coming into the internal stores to the reflex cannons. That should speed up the charging time."

"Doing it now," Lang replied hands dancing over his console. "It's done. We can begin powering up the reflex cannons as soon as you're ready."

"Minmei send a message to the alien ships," Lisa instructed the singer. "Tell them this is their last warning, stand down and withdraw or be destroyed."

"I doubt they're going to listen," Rand commented.

"Probably not," Lisa admitted, "but I would rather give them one final chance to leave and live than simply burn them from the stars."

"Message sent, Lisa," Minmei said before Rand could reply. "No response."

Lisa sighed. "So be it," she said resigned to the fact that they were going to have to kill these two alien ships to ensure the protection of the planet below. Hoped this Apophis character would see sense and accept her final sincere offer to leave the system in peace. Sadly it seemed like it wasn't to be. "Begin reflex cannon firing sequence."

"Aye. Connecting reflex cannons to ships power grid… connection confirmed," Rick reported from the weapons station he'd somewhat commandeered. "Opening firing booms," as he spoke a whirring of powerful motors could be heard throughout the ship as at the bow the two booms that made up the first four hundred meters of the ships length split in two length ways, the two halves moving up and down in a similar manner to a Zentraedi monitor. The inner surface of the booms began to glow a moment before arcs of energy began to play between them as phenomenal amounts of power began to build up.

Up on the bridge a new window opened on Rick's console showing the time till the build-up of supercharged subatomic particles between the firing boons reached critical density. At which point the cannons would be ready to fire, indeed would have to be fired to prevent a massive overload of the ships power systems which at best would cripple them and at worst destroy the _Pioneer_.

"Firing sequence activated. Targets locked," Rick reported "time to weapons discharge four minutes."

Lisa nodded in understanding, even though naturally Rick couldn't see her since unlike on the SDF-1 the consoles on the bridge of the _Pioneer_ were all located forward of the command position. _Now all we can do is wait,_ she thought as the distant thrum of the ships reflex furnaces increased in pitch and volume until a distinctive humming of immense power could be heard throughout the entire ship as the reflex cannons charged up. She glanced at the tactical hologram, which like Rick's own console, now incorporated a countdown to reflex cannon discharge.

03:40… 03:39… 03:38…

Another part of the display showed the status of the omni-directional barrier that was protecting the ship. It was taking a heavy bombardment from both alien ships, blast after blast from their weapons impacting the shield. Most of the energy of the blasts was immediately absorbed and redirected, feeding straight into the mechanisms that were building up the power levels needed to not just fuel one reflex cannon blast but two of them – at the same time. Ironically – for their antagonists – the more they fired upon them the more energy was being absorbed as the alien bombardment wasn't yet strong enough to begin overloading the barrier.

It would be eventually though as while most of the energy of the blasts was being absorbed there was a limit to just how much energy the ships systems could bleed off the shield at once. While the rest of the energy was automatically spread across the whole of the force field to dissipate as much as possible some was left behind and it was that small amount that would build up. Build up and start pushing the energy particles that made up the barrier towards and eventually reaching critical density at which point all the energy built up in the barrier system would be released in a single massive blast of thermonuclear energy whose explosive force would make the most powerful nukes ever detonated on Earth look like firecrackers.

Only twice before had that ever happened. The first she recalled vividly being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people when the SDF-1's omni-directional barrier detonated over the Canadian city of Toronto instantly wiping the city off the face of the Earth and actually reduced the depth of Lake Ontario by two and half feet for nearly a week due to the sheer amount of water vaporised along with the city that had been such a prominent feature of the north-western shore of the eastern most of America's Great Lakes. The second time it had been an intentional overload inside the hollowed out asteroid that had served as the mobile headquarters of the Zentraedi Armada and the citadel of their supreme commander. Coupled with the blast of numerous reflex warheads launched from SDF-1 that blast had been enough to not only completely destroy the base but wipe out the entire fleet of ships around it.

Suffice to say she didn't want to see such a blast happen again, certainly not this close to Earth. Thankfully unless the aliens were somehow to increase their already extremely high rate of fire the barrier wouldn't be in danger of undergoing such a catastrophic chain reaction. It would be close but the barrier would hold. Still she made a mental note to keep a very close eye on the part of the tactical display that showed barrier status, ready to order Rick to drop it earlier if they had to, before turning her attention back to the ongoing countdown.

02:15… 02:14… 02:13

* * *

**Klorel's Ha'tak**

**A Few Minutes Earlier**

Jack cursed and ducked behind a wall buttress as a golden glowing glob of superheated plasma impacted the bulkhead right where his head was a moment ago. The impact showering him with hot sparks that made him hiss slightly in pain. Not giving the Jaffa who'd just shot at him another chance he leaned out of cover and fired his commandeered zat gun at the offending alien, twice. The Jaffa screamed and dropped to the deck dead as the energy surge fatally disrupted his nervous system.

Jack ducked back behind the buttress as plasma bolts from the dead Jaffa's friends shot right where he'd been – intent on disembowelling him in retaliation for the death. Automatic gunfire from Sam and Daniel answered them, followed by a stream of zat fire from Teal'c forcing the Jaffa to duck for cover themselves to avoid getting shot dead. Not that all of them made it as two of the remaining four Jaffa in the patrol dropped dead, one with the lightning-like discharge of a zat'nik'atel dancing over his body the other riddled with bullet holes.

_This could be going better,_ Jack mused to himself as he leaned slightly out of cover to fire a few supressing shots at the last two Jaffa. Teal'c had been, unfortunately, correct when he'd said that there would be a lot of Jaffa between them and the ships bridge. This was the third enemy patrol that they'd encountered since leaving the holding cells and the second in just under five minutes. Each time they'd been forced to fight their way past and that was costing them time. Not to mention Daniel and Sam were starting to run a bit low on ammo.

And he knew it was probably only going to get worse the closer they got to the bridge. Like all Goa'uld while he was arrogant and a megalomaniac Klorel wasn't stupid, plus he'd have some knowledge of their combat tactics and way of thinking from Skaara's memories. As such he would be well aware that they were certainly aiming to take the command centre and would be directing as many Jaffa as he could to intercept them.

The sound of two staff blasts in rapid succession from down the corridor caught along with the thuds of armour-clad bodies hitting the deck, caught Jack's attention. Cautious he peered around the buttress, to see both Jaffa that had been firing at them sprawled on the floor dead, holes the size of small dinner plates blown in their bodies. Standing over the slightly smouldering bodies was another Jaffa, one who while still fit and strong looked like he was well over a hundred, a Jaffa who was very familiar.

"Bra'tac," he said stepping out of cover.

"Hello Colonel O'Neill," Bra'tac replied giving the human officer an interested look. He had been surprised to find out that SG-1 had somehow gotten aboard this ship before they'd left the small outpost Apophis had been using as a staging area for this campaign. How they managed it he wasn't entirely sure, though he guessed the Stargate being carried deep within the ship had something to do with it. Somehow they'd learned of the co-ordinates of the outpost and come here not realise they were actually coming aboard a spacecraft instead of a surface. After all there was no way they could have believed a single four man team – even if one of them was a Jaffa – would be sufficient to stop the attack.

"Tek'ma'te Master Bra'tac," Teal'c said approaching before the big rebel Jaffa and the elder Jaffa who'd taught him all he knew as well as opening his then young mind to the truth of the Goa'uld grasped forearms in a traditional greeting.

"Teal'c, it is good to see you again old friend," Bra'tac acknowledged with a smile. Before nodding politely at the other two members of SG-1. "Doctor Jackson, Captain Carter it is agreeable to see you all again. I assume you are here to do something to prevent the imminent attack upon your world?"

"You could say that yeah," Jack replied. "Thanks for the save by the way."

"You are most welcome. I did have my own plans in place to avert the attack on your planet however I fear they will no longer work given what the long range sensors have revealed about your planet."

"Which is?" Jack queried.

"A large starship of unknown origin has been detected orbiting your planet," Bra'tac explained, "Apophis has dispatched a squadron of Al'kesh to investigate it before moving the fleet into attack position. I assume the vessel belongs to your people."

Jack frowned. "Ah no we don't have starships," he replied already wondering just who this starship could belong to, and what was it doing here. "Ah what are Al'kesh?"

"Goa'uld midrange bombers," Teal'c explained. "They are both considerably faster and more heavily armed than death gliders with considerably more range being capable of limited interstellar travel. They are typically employed both as scouts like the MALP devices sent through the Stargates and as support craft for ground attack."

Jack's frown deepened and he started to open his mouth to ask why they'd never encountered them before now. But before he could there was a whirring whining sound from deep within the bowls of the ship a moment before everything lurched forward with such force that he was thrown to the deck. Only to be physically picked back up and knocked onto his back as the ship lurched again, backwards this time. Yelps around him let him know that everyone else was getting the same treatment. The whine disappeared and he groaned before awkward sitting up, wincing as bruised back muscles protested the movement most strongly.

"What the hell was that," he asked.

"We appear to have just executed a short range hyperspace jump," Teal'c answered. "I assume we've just jumped from our location near the fifth planet of the system to Earth orbit."

"Why would the Goa'uld do that," Daniel asked groaning as he picked himself up, inwardly hoping no Jaffa came along now as they were all sitting ducks while they got their wits back.

"They would do so, Doctor Jackson, if the Al'kesh dispatched by Apophis had been destroyed by the unknown vessel," Bra'tac replied "Al'kesh are well shielded for their size so their destruction would mark the unknown as a threat to be eliminated as soon as possible."

"Hmm that could work for us," Jack mused as he got his feet back under him. "If the Goa'uld are about to engage whoever it is in orbit in battle will distract the crew. We should encounter less resistance as we attempt to take the bridge."

"The bridge," Bra'tac queried uncertain what O'Neill meant using that term in this context.

"He speaks of the pel'tac," Teal'c explained.

"I see," Bra'tac asked. "What is your plan?"

"Take the bridge," Jack replied, "we've already planted explosive charges in strategic locations throughout the ship – when detonated they'll destroy this ship."

"But the blast won't destroy Apophis's ship due to the shields surrounding it," Bra'tac realised. "So you want to take the pel'tac and turn this ships weapons upon Apophis." Jack nodded. "A viable strategy, O'Neill and very similar to what I originally planned to avert the attack and you are right the crew will shortly be distracted by combat."

No sooner than those words left Bra'tacs mouth than a deep, rumbling boom like thunder crashing directly overhead, echoed through the ship and the deck rocked under them coming within a hairs breath of pitching them all to the floor again. "We appear to have engaged in battle," Teal'c commented as gravitational stability returned. But only for a moment as the ship shook again mere seconds later.

"Then we have little time left to execute your strategy," Bra'tac added knowing from the way the ship was being shaken that whatever weapons fire was hitting them it was powerful. Powerful enough to put the shields under considerable strain. "Come we must hurry."

Everyone nodded back before beginning to run for the command centre of the Goa'uld vessel, even as a third blast of enemy fire rocked the ship.

* * *

**Pel'tac**

**Klorel's Ha'tak**

**A Few Minutes Later**

Klorel felt cold.

Sitting on his pel'tac throne, watching the bolts of superheated plasma from both Ha'tak pummelling the odd energy shield that had appeared around the vessel that had dared to challenge them, he couldn't help but shake the feeling that something was… well wrong. He didn't know why the vessel had stopped returning their fire and put up that shield instead, its weapons had been inflicting considerable damage to their shields the three volleys that had struck dropping their shields by nearly forty percent. A few more volleys of those powerful beams would have certainly seen their destruction.

So why had it stopped firing back? Why put up such an odd form of energy shield? A shield that has so far withstood enough firepower to blow a Ha'tak out of the sky several times over. It made absolutely no sense and that was enough to concern him. _What are they hiding behind that opaque shield of theirs,_ he mused, _what are they planning? If only the Jaffa would hurry up bringing that annoying human and the shol'vah up here so I can interrogate them on what they know about that ship._

The sound of footsteps approaching drew his attention and he looked up to see Bra'tac come into the pel'tac. **"Ah Bra'tac,"** he said in greeting **"where are the prisoners I asked to be brought up for interrogation?"**

"I am afraid my lord that they have escaped their cell. The Jaffa assigned to bring them to you are all dead," Bra'tac reported.

"**WHAT!"** Klorel thundered standing up, his host's eyes flaring with a bright yellow-white light showing his wrath. **"Find them. Find them and bring them too me immediately, Bra'tac. They shall be punished severely for such insolence."**

"No."

Klorel blinked his host's eyes in shock. Had Bra'tac just said no to him? Why would he do something like that? Bra'tac had been a loyal servant to his father for most of his long life and never defied the Goa'uld before. **"What?"** he repeated thinking he had merely misheard the old master.

"You heard me."

Klorel inclined Skaara's head to one side as he walked up more puzzled by the defiance than anything else. **"Why do you defy your God, Bra'tac,"** he asked curious and willing to give the Jaffa a chance to explain himself. Explain himself and ask for forgiveness for such an insolent act.

"I do so because you are not a god," Bra'tac answered, "you are a parasite within a child, and I despise you."

For a moment Klorel was dumbstruck by that answer, then righteous fury exploded like a supernova through his mind. **"Jaffa kree'tai,"** he snarled raising his kara'kesh and activating it sending the neural beam drilling into the revealed shol'vah's skull. **"I AM YOUR GOD," **he thundered. **"And you will feel my wrath."**

Bra'tac stumbled then collapsed to his knees as what felt like a million needles was driven into his skull by the hand device. Despite the searing pain it was inflicting upon him he glared up at the parasite, refusing to give the Goa'uld the satisfaction of him crying out in pain even as he was aware that the other Jaffa in the pel'tac had turned to watch what was going on. "I die free," he said simply, in the process giving SG-1 the signal they had been waiting for.

What happened next was almost too fast to follow.

Both the port and starboard side entrances to the pel'tac opened and the four members, two to each door, came through firing as they did. Two of the three other Jaffa on the pel'tac died instantly mowed down by a vicious barrage of zat'nik'atel and automatic weapons fire. The remaining Jaffa started to go for his own zat'nik'atel only to die from another burst of projectile weapons fire that shredded his torso armour and the chest beneath dropping him to the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of blood.

Simultaneously, with adrenaline-fuelled strength, Bra'tac shot up and ignoring the pain from the neural beam pushed the startled Goa'uld back with all his strength. Klorel yelped as he thrown back, desperately he wind milled his host's arms to try and keep his balance but it was doomed to failure as he crashed backwards smashing into the base of the throne dais with a truly brutal smack. Darkness enveloped him as host and symbiote alike were instantly robbed of consciousness by the impact.

* * *

Jack smirked as he gazed around the bridge of the Goa'uld mothership. Thanks to the plan that Bra'tac had quickly come up with during their journey up here the attack on the bridge had gone without a hitch. The bridge crew had quickly been killed and Klorel/Skaara was now sprawled out unconscious against a dais that housed a classic Egyptian throne.

"Tie him up someone," he said nodding to the currently in dreamland Goa'uld, before turning his attention to Bra'tac. "Are you alright," he asked knowing from bitter experience how much the neural beam from a Goa'uld hand device hurt, it had after all been designed as much to torture as it was to kill.

"I will be fine," Bra'tac replied feeling the immature symbiote in his abdominal pouch already fixing the minor neurological damage inflicted by the kara'kesh's beam. Without waiting for a reply he moved over to the master console at the front of the pel'tac and began accessing the ships systems noting that they were firing at some kind of opaque force field that had surrounded the ship that they'd detected in Earth orbit. A field that suddenly seemed to be losing power yet the power reduction didn't have any of the normal signs of shield failure due to depletion, instead the pattern looked like a deliberate deactivation of the shield.

"Okay which station is weapons," Jack asked looking around the bridge while keeping half an eye on Carter and Daniel who were busily tying up Klorel/Skaara, Daniel having a conflicted expression on his face as he did so. He made another mental note to speak with him about all this later as it had been hard enough for him seeing Skaara enslaved like this, for Daniel it was bound to be even worse.

"It is this one, O'Neill," Teal'c answered moving over to a black-coloured, planet metal station with what looked like two blue hemispheres on the top. Hemispheres the big Jaffa immediately put his fingers on. "I can change the target coordinates for the gunnery crews from here."

"Do it," Jack instructed.

"Colonel O'Neill I believe you need to see this," Bra'tac said from the main console prompting Jack to come over.

"What is it," he asked, Bra'tac gestured to the viewport and he looked out…

…just in time to see a shimmering yellow-green wall disappear revealing an enormous pinkish-red ship hanging there in space. A ship whose bows looked for all the world like two tuning forks stood on their sides, tuning forks that were glowing with a phenomenal amount of power. Jack's eyes widened in a mixture of shock and horror at what he saw. Shock because incredibly, impossibly he recognised this ship as coming from an 80's anime Charlie – rest his soul – had loved to watch on Saturday mornings, and which was somehow real. Horror because he knew what that glow was and what it meant was about to happen.

"Bra'tac take evasive action," he said a clear note of mixed fear, horror and desperation in his voice as the glow between the tuning forks became almost too bright to look at.

"O'Neill?" Bra'tac questioned.

"Do it now or we're all dead," Jack replied almost shouting in his need to communicate the dire nature of what they were suddenly being faced with, and what would certainly happen to them if the reflex beam hit the ship.

Moved by the urgency in the Tau'ri males tone and the honest horror and fear in it Bra'tac accessed the navigational controls and activated the ships starboard lateral thrusters to bring them into a sharp bank away…

…just as the alien ship fired.

* * *

The dual reflex cannons at the bow of the SDF-3 glowed brighter than the light of the sun with pent up power. For a moment more nothing happened then with a silent roar the cannons discharged, unleashing two coruscating beams of purest destruction towards her enemies. Hotter than the surface of a blue-giant sun and more energy than the biggest solar flare ever recorded by man or Goa'uld both beams crossed the distance between the _Pioneer_ and the Ha'tak's in barely four seconds.

The Ha'tak commanded by Apophis being slightly ahead of its fellow ship in orbit was hit first. The beam that struck it laughing at the Goa'uld ships shields, punching right through them as if they were not even there to rip deep into the very centre of the tetrahedral shaped vessel. Naquada-trinium alloy armour and hull dissolved like ice crystals in the path of a blow torch allowing the beam to punch right through the ship, utterly eviscerating everything in its path, before shooting out the other side of the pyramid completely bisecting the vessel.

For a moment out of time the ship hung there silent, great glowing cracks rippling across the hull from the enormous hole punched in it by the passage of the beam, then it came apart. Erupting into a brilliant explosion that illuminated the skies over an entire planetary hemisphere as naquada reactors, and the Stargate carried deep within the vessels hull, detonated. In a mere millisecond it was gone, reduced to a rapidly spreading and dissipating plume of dust, radiation and plasma taking with it the Goa'uld System Lord that had been such a bane to the SGC's off world teams since his first attack on the then mothballed facility just over a year earlier.

The second ship was slightly more fortunate.

Thanks to Jack's frantic order of evasive action, and Bra'tacs response to said order, the ship managed to avoid a direct strike and with it certain annihilation. Though it wasn't much of an escape as the blurred fringes of the reflex beam still grazed the ship. The Goa'uld shields flared into visibility for all of a millisecond before shattering like a balloon being stabbed by a needle, the sudden catastrophic loss the shield sending a power surge through the ship triggering a barrage of internal explosions as numerous power conduits overloaded and ruptured.

And still the destruction went on.

Supercharged particles spilling from the sides of the beam slammed into the facing side of the hull like a hurricane slamming into an unprotected shore. Plasma cannons, sensor masts and communications antennae across that entire side of the ship were instantly torn off the hull and incinerated by the colossal force of the reflex beam. But worse was to come as massive sections of the hull, heated beyond the metals capacity to withstand, melted away exposing the internal structure and framework of the ship to the beams not so tender mercies. Sections of the space frame turned red, then white before melting away themselves triggering a second even larger barrage of secondary then tertiary explosions as whole sections of the ship underwent total structural collapse.

The reflex beams shut off. As they did so the surviving Ha'tak spun away completely out of control trailing a massive slick of radiation, burning atmosphere, debris and the bodies of dead and dying crew.

* * *

**Authors Note: Well another chapter bites the dust. Has SG-1 survived the reflex beam attack on Klorel's ship or have they been injured/maimed/killed? Sorry folks you'll have to wait and see. I know evil aren't I – lol.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Ship of the Line: Pioneers Dawn**

**Disclaimer: Still don't own these characters.**

* * *

**Chapter Six**

**Bridge**

**SDF-3 Pioneer**

**A Few Moments Earlier**

"T-Minus thirty seconds to firing."

Rick's voice echoed across the near silence that had fallen on the bridge. Near silence because there was now an audible rumbling thrum of power that could be both heard, and felt as a powerful vibration, throughout the entire ship as the reflex cannons approached critical power density. At which point both cannons would discharge unleashing the immense collection of unstable protoculture energies upon the two tetrahedral ships currently engaging them.

Everyone's pulses were racing, their heart rates seemingly rising with the continuing power build up. It was an understandable given how rarely they actually used reflex cannons in ship-to-ship combat. While they were insanely powerful energy weapons - indeed more than once hitting a target with a reflex beam had been compared to hitting it with a controlled, synthetically generated solar flare so great was the weapons destructive power - reflex cannons had, as weapons went, an appallingly slow rate of fire. Hence why most ship-to-ship battles were fought with conventional high-powered beams, be they particle or laser based, as well as various types missiles and torpedoes. Reflex cannons were generally only used when they either wanted to destroy a stationary target or wipe out a large group of hostiles in a first strike.

In this instance however they had little choice but to use the dual reflex cannons that made up the _Pioneer's_ primary weapons array. The two pyramidal warships firing at them were putting considerable strain on the omni-directional barrier as it either absorbed and redirected the energy of the plasma blasts or dispersed it across the barriers surface to dissipate. Had they had a larger crew aboard, so the tactical and damage control systems could be operated properly, they would have continued engaging them with conventional weapons. After all their sensors had shown the enemy defence barriers weakening rapidly under fire from their heavy particle beam cannons. But with only nine people out of an operational crew of over six thousand that wasn't possible, the automatic systems hadn't been able to keep up with the alien attack. They had to take the attacking force out with one strike and the reflex cannons were the only weapons aboard that were capable of doing so, in fact it was more than a bit of overkill considering even one cannon could annihilate multiple targets with a single shot.

"Lisa, fifteen seconds remaining to firing," Rick reported. "Both targets are holding position, target locks are confirmed."

"Co-ordinate the ODB's drop with the cannon fire, then redirect the power back into the pinpoints. We might not get another chance at this."

"Understood." Rick nodded looking out at the glowing barrier between them and the alien vessels for a moment knowing Lisa was right. The barrier generators wouldn't be up to doing this again, there would be too much risk of causing a catastrophic chain reaction in the barrier, resulting in an explosion, that while sure to destroy the enemy would also destroy a very large chunk of Earth's satellite infrastructure as well as cause potentially very serious damage to the ships electronic systems.

He checked his console again as the countdown reached its final stage. "Five seconds," he said. "Four… three… dropping omi-directional barrier and commencing power redirection to pinpoint barrier generators. Reflex cannons at full power."

Lisa's smile was grim as she gave the final order. "Fire."

With an audible roar of power the reflex cannons commenced their discharge. Dual beams of pure destruction reaching out for the two attacking pyramid ships, the light of the blasts making everyone shield their eyes even as the bridge viewports automatically polarized against the glare. For ten long seconds the roar of the discharge sounded through the ship as the SDF-3 poured out more power every second than a city the size of this time periods New York used in a day. Then with breath taking suddenness it stopped.

"Reflex discharge complete," Rick reported scanning his displays. "Cannons beginning to secure from firing mode."

"Effect," Lisa asked.

"One enemy target has been totally destroyed," Scott reported scanning the sensor displays, where the closest of the two alien ships had been there was now nothing but a cooling and spreading cloud of incandescent plasma and irradiated dust its annihilation total. "The other is severely damaged, its spinning away completely out of control if nothing changes then on its current trajectory it will impact the moon in the vicinity of the Sea of Tranquillity within the next four to eight hours. Sensors report massive damage to the vessel, almost their entire starboard flank has been destroyed or ripped open. It's losing power rapidly and venting massive quantities of atmosphere. I estimate total life-support failure within two minutes."

"Why weren't they destroyed," Rand asked feeling a little shaken at actually seeing what reflex cannons could do in combat. It was one thing to hear about them and the devastation they could inflict, he'd grown up hearing about the Rain of Death after all, but quite another to see the weapons actually in action. It was obvious to him having seen the beams that both ships should have been instantly blown to dust and not just the one.

"From the ion trail it looks like they fired their starboard navigational thrusters just as the cannons began firing," Scott replied, "they were obviously trying to take evasive action and while they managed to avoid a direct hit they were still close enough to get hit by both the beams energy wake and the particle overspill. That would have still been more than enough to totally wreck the ship."

"Oh," Rand answered. _Bet any survivors over there are wishing they'd gotten hit full on,_ he thought, _that way they'd have been killed instantly instead of being doomed to suffer death by asphyxiation as their air runs out._

"Commander Bernard are there any life-signs over there," Lisa asked.

"Very few of the ma'am," Scott answered. "We're reading only a handful on what appears to be the ships bridge. But they're weak. Whoever they are they're probably unconscious by now as the bridge is depressurising along with the rest of the ship."

"We should put them out of their misery," Rook commented unknowingly echoing Rand's thought that it was better to die quick than suffer the agonizing death by asphyxiation as the alien ships air was vented to space through the massive breach ripped in its hull by the reflex beam.

Lisa nodded in agreement with the blond. She started to open her mouth to order her husband to resume firing on the remaining ship with their conventional weapons. But before the words could even begin to form in her throat Ariel spoke up. "No we need to get them out of there," she said a faintly mysterious look on her face, a look Scott, Rand and Rook had become somewhat familiar with recently as it signified that the human-form Invid just _knew_ something. "The people on the bridge of that ship aren't its owners. They're not our enemies."

"And how are we going to do that," Roy asked curiously turning his chair to look at the Invid princess. "We'll never be able to get over there before the ship loses what little life support it has left."

Ariel exchanged a look with Sera who nodded in agreement with her. "You cannot," she agreed before gesturing to Sera, "but we can." Without waiting for a response she concentrated on one of the advanced matter-energy abilities she had as a stage-five Invid, promptly vanishing in a flash of gold light as she teleported away. A moment later Sera followed her.

"What the-? Where did they go," Doctor Lang asked from the engineering station, the scientist in him absolutely fascinated as the two Invid teleported away. He couldn't help but wonder about the exact mechanism involved in it as in his experience while it was possible in theory – with robotechnology there was little that wasn't impossible – molecular teleportation was impossible in practice. To actually see someone do it, and apparently without effort or assistance from an external device, was more than a little surprising even though he'd already seen and experienced it himself when the two Invid teleported them all straight here to the bridge from one of the _Pioneer's_ numerous hanger bays.

"Probably to the bridge of the alien ship to rescue whoever it is that Ariel's sensed there," Scott replied reasonably though inwardly he couldn't help but worry. While he knew Ariel could take care of herself these days, now that she knew what she was and what her powers were capable of, and that there was little that could really hurt her he still wished she'd think about these things first. Or at very least take him and his Cyclone along so he could protect her should she run into trouble – the inner cave man that all males had screaming at him that he should be there to protect his chosen mate especially as he'd already lost one mate to hostile forces.

He felt an armour encased hand touch his arm being unable to touch his shoulder due to the CVR-3 body armour he was still wearing over his uniform. He looked up to see Rand looking at him with an understanding look on his face, while he wasn't telepathic the young Argentinean freedom fighter knew him well enough to know what he was thinking and understand his worry. Rand's look clearly saying without words 'she's going to be okay, Scott. You're not going to lose her like you did Marlene'. He nodded back appreciatively.

Minmei, observing the silent interaction between the two men, smiled knowingly. Like everyone else she'd been there, worrying about people she cared about when they were going into hostile situations. Before she'd gotten so swept up in her sudden stardom on the SDF-1 she'd worried about Rick much the same way whenever the then junior veritech pilot went off to do battle with the Zentraedi. Though she'd never let him know she worried about him in that way when maybe she should have instead of letting herself get distracted by the fame that came after she won the Miss Macross pageant launching her superstar career, then she might haven't have lost him to Lisa. _But then hindsight is always easy isn't it, Minmei,_ she thought. Though she'd come to terms with the fact that she'd lost Rick, due in no small part to her own stupidity as much as Kyle's interference, it still hurt somewhat to think about.

To distract herself, she didn't want to start brooding again as that so didn't look good on her, she glanced at the communications screens. Where something caught her attention, a signal that was being continuously beamed at them from somewhere in Colorado. According to the computer it had been there for some time cycling through various radio bands; someone down there was definitely trying to establish contact with them. Unfortunately since the radio signal wasn't on any of the official bands used be either the Robotech Defence/Expeditionary Forces or the Army of the Southern Cross the _Pioneer's_ computer hadn't automatically informed them that someone on Earth was attempting to hail them. She was only seeing it now due to sheer dumb luck.

"Lisa, you should see this," she called out.

Lisa raised an eyebrow before standing up from the commander's chair and moving over. "What is it, Minmei?" she asked. Minmei gestured to the screen displaying the information on the signal, Lisa frowned as she looked over the entertainers shoulder. "How long have we been receiving this?" she asked.

Minmei's hands danced over the controls for a moment. "According to the computer since before we even came aboard," she answered. "Yet the computer didn't flag it up for our attention since it's not on any of our normal communications channels."

Lisa made a mental note to ask Dr Lang to review the comm. systems automatic signal filtration systems as any signal being directed at the ship on radio bands should have been flagged up as a possible hail. "Can you tell the nature of the transmission?" she asked.

"It's an audio loop," Minmei answered, "and I've refined the signals origin point. It's coming from Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado."

"NORAD," Roy suggested being close enough to the comm station to hear every word they said and being only able to think of one military facility that had been based at Cheyenne Mountain at this point in time. Of course after the arrival of the alien ship that became the SDF-1 NORAD had been decommissioned and the network of man-made tunnels and caves that had housed it converted into one of the many research facilities trying to understand the complex technological and scientific puzzle that was robotechnology.

"I don't know who else it could be," Lisa answered as like Roy she couldn't recall any other military installation having been based at Cheyenne Mountain in this apparent timeframe. "Minmei put the loop on the speakers. We might as well here what they have to say."

"Alright, Lisa," Minmei agreed before manipulating the controls again. Immediately the overhead speakers crackled into life.

"…this is United States Stargate Command, please identify yourself and state your intentions. Repeat. Attention unknown alien vessel orbiting over California, this is United States Stargate Command, please identify yourself and state your intentions," a vaguely Texan sounding male voice said.

"Stargate Command!" Roy exclaimed. "Who the hell are they? I don't remember their being something called that."

"I don't know," Lisa admitted as bemused as Roy was as the transmission continued to repeat.

"Maybe we should answer and find out," Rook suggested.

Lisa nodded in agreement, deeply curious about what this Stargate Command was, but before she could open her mouth to instruct Minmei to open a channel to Cheyenne Mountain a flash of gold light at the back of the bridge caught her attention. She whirled around in time to see Ariel and Sera reappear with a number of individual's slumped unconscious on the deck at their feat. Both Invid princesses looked a little dirty, their faces and clothing smudged with soot, but quite triumphant at their accomplishment.

She surveyed the people the two Invid had brought back with them. They were quite an assortment. Four of them were wearing the kind of black clothing that had been favoured by Special Ops personnel while going on missions in the years before the arrival of the SDF-1. And weren't they a motley crew if ever she saw one. One of them was an older man who looked to be about the same age her father – rest his soul – had been when he died during the destruction of Alaska Base during the Rain of Death. Another was a blond haired female who looked to be in her late twenties or very early thirties. Both looked fit and even as unconscious as they were had the air of professional soldiers.

It was the third man however that really confused her. While he was fit and dressed in Special Ops clothing there was something about him the screamed that he wasn't a soldier. Instead he kind of had an air of an academic more than anyone else, something further reinforced by his longer than regulation light brown hair – those regulations hadn't been relaxed until the Global Civil War when exactly enforcing some of the standards of military dress etiquette had, by necessity, been metaphorically thrown out the equally metaphorical window and never been reapplied to the RDF after said war ended – and the spectacles he was wearing.

The fourth man was the strangest of them all. He was an Africa-American who was built like a tank, possessing a level of muscular development that would turn many professional athletes and bodybuilders green with envy, and carried a warrior air similar to many Zentraedi she'd known over the last few years at least those who'd stayed in the military. The strangest thing about him though wasn't the warrior air but the odd raised gold stylized serpent tattoo he had on his forehead. It was completely unlike anything she'd seen before and was the kind of body decoration that would normally never be permitted in the military in any modern time period.

The other two men that the Invid had teleported over from the doomed alien warship were even stranger to look at that than the first four. The first was an older man who from the looks of him had to be in his mid-to-late sixties or very early seventies though he was still very fit looking for someone of his age. He had the same raised gold stylized snake tattoo as the big African-American on his aged wrinkle-strewn forehead and though unconscious his face was one that spoke of a literal lifetime of hardship he also had the same Zentraedi-like warrior air as the African-American. What was most bizarre though was the clothes he was wearing, or rather armour as it appeared to be a form of very fine chainmail with a thicker but still highly flexible metallic panelling over the top on the shoulders, torso and forearms. He had an odd device that looked like a coiled snake on one forearm.

The final man was young, looking no older than Rand, Rook or Scott, and looked to be of either Mediterranean or Arabic descent. He had thick braided black hair with golden ribbons here and there. He was wearing quite brightly coloured clothing that attested more to vanity than anything else as they didn't really look that functional at all. He also had his hands bound behind his back by plastic zip-cuffs.

"We should take them to a medical facility," Sera said gesturing to the new arrivals, jolting Lisa out of her contemplation of the new arrivals. "The bridge of the alien ship was filled with considerable quantities of acrid smoke when we arrived there. They're bound to have inhaled considerable amounts and I believe that is quite harmful to human physiology."

"The closest sickbay is two decks down from here," Lisa replied nodding in agreement. "Does anyone here have any training at all in field medicine?"

"I know some," Scott answered, basic field medicine had been a mandatory course during the second year at the Robotech Academy after it was re-established on Tirol. Given the point in the timeline she'd come from he wasn't surprised that Lisa didn't know that particular fact as back when she'd gone to the academy – way back the two thousands – field medicine had been a purely elective course.

"I can help as well," Rand added, while he had no official qualifications at all – mandatory, official schooling having come to an end during and after the Invid invaded and occupied Earth overwhelming the Army of Southern Cross which had been weakened and exhausted by battle with the Robotech Masters – he read whenever he got the chance. Plus in the wilderness you learned how to take care of yourself and keep your body heathy – and how to heal injuries if you sustained them as well as dealing with inevitable illness – you had to if you were going to survive.

"Alright take them to sickbay," Lisa instructed a second before movement among the survivors caught her attention. She turned her attention to them in time to see the one in the elaborate, vanity catering robes eyes flicker open before he awkwardly managed to sit up. A look of distaste mixed with anger appeared on his face as he realised he was bound.

Abruptly his eyes glowed as though he had lights behind his eyes. **"You dare to capture, Klorel," **he said in an odd, deeply resonant voice that didn't sound remotely human. It also rang with a mixture of arrogance and condescension as if the man speaking felt superior to them in some way. **"Release me this instant and I shall be merciful."**

Standing behind Klorel Ariel frowned slightly as she began to get a profound feeling of… well… _wrongness_ from him. Her frown deepened and she reached out with her psionic senses, probing him even as Lisa blinked then frowned at Klorel's arrogance. What her senses revealed shocked and appalled her to the very core of her being. The man before her was actually two beings one a human about the same age as Rand, the other was something else. Something snake-like that psychically literally reeked of a combination of arrogance, malice, egotism and an insatiable desire for power the made the Robotech Masters at their worst seem tame. She doubted even the Children of Shadow – her peoples oldest, greatest and most hated of enemies – could match the feeling of pure evil she got off the snake-like creature inside the human.

She could tell, somehow, that this thing was somehow controlling the human that it was inhabiting. There were human thought patterns present but they were supressed, compressed back and held down by the dark, malignancy of the creature. _I have to help him,_ she thought as pity and compassion for the mentally trapped human stirred within her. _But how?_

A voice seemed to come from somewhere within her, a voice she'd heard before both when she'd had her visions and when she'd started using more of her advanced Invid powers. _"Trust yourself, Ariel my daughter,"_ the voice of Mother Regis told her, _"you can accomplish this task and eliminate the parasite without harming the host. You just need to trust and to believe."_

_I do believe, mother,_ she thought before gently putting a hand on the back of the infected human's neck, which was where she somehow knew the parasite that called itself Klorel was actually located. Before letting her power flow.

Around her the bridge seemed to dissolve away into a dark void, a void with a bright white light at the centre. A light that drew her in until she suddenly found herself seemingly standing in a high vaulted stone hall of some kind. Small oil-burning braziers lined the room spaced equally between the columns that seemed to be such a dominant feature of the room.

"**You dare to challenge me," **Klorel said from behind prompting her to spin around. To find herself face to face with a short flight of steps leading up to a dais on which sitting in an elaborate gold and stone throne was Klorel. Behind the throne against the wall she could see the host, Skaara a part of her said his name to be, bound to the wall at his wrists and ankles by metal shackles.

"Yes I dare," she said. "This body is not yours, you will leave it now."

Klorel laughed. **"And who are you to make me," **he asked sounding amused. **"I am a God. Who are you to think you can stand against me? Leave now or I will destroy you."**

"I am Ariel, daughter of the Regis, crown princess of the Invid," Ariel replied. "And it is you who will leave the body you have stolen or I will destroy you."

"**You wish a fight? So be it," **Klorel answered standing up and raising his kara'kesh. **"I will enjoy watching you die, Ariel of the Invid."**

Without waiting for a reply he attacked unleashing a concussion burst from the kara'kesh at the creature who'd dared to invade the mind of his host and attempt to force him out. Ariel merely held up her hands as the blast, visible in this mental place as a wave of red light, came towards her. The moment it reached her hands it stopped before collapsing into a small ball of light that she immediately threw back at Klorel.

Klorel emitted a startled yelp as the blast struck him and made him stumble back for a moment before recovering. With a growl of anger he unleashed another concussion blast only for Ariel to again catch and return it dropping him to his knees with a scream of pain. Around them the hall shook as he collapsed to his knees some dust falling down from above.

"**You will not defeat me,"** he growled getting back to his feet and descending the steps deciding that since the kara'kesh concussion blast wasn't working he'd try the more direct route. It would be more satisfying to kill her – or rather destroy her mind – that way.

He started to raise the kara'kesh again only for Ariel's hand to snap out and grab his wrist. "Last chance, Klorel," she told him. "Leave this body now or be destroyed."

"**This body is mine I will never abandon it,"** Klorel snarled as he tried to activate the neural beam only for nothing to happen, somehow the grip on his wrist was preventing the mental representation of the kara'kesh being activated.

"So be it," Ariel replied sadly before casting aside the mental representation of her human form and assuming the quasi-energy form that was the natural state of a stage five Invid. She released his wrist and instead thrust a glowing golden-white arm into his chest and heart. Golden light flooded out from her hand, spreading throughout the mental projection of Klorel's human host. The glow spread out from Klorel, spreading first through the floor then up the columns and walls to meet up at the top of the roof buttressing.

Impaled by her hand Klorel convulsed and screamed as he felt the energy starting to destroy him. **"Stop, please stop,"** he pleaded as he felt the fundamental structure of his natural serpentine form beginning to break down.

"To late," Ariel replied firmly as she continued her psionic assault upon the foul creature. She had no choice now she had to see this through to the end, knowing instinctively that if she stopped now Klorel was still going to die but that he would have enough time to, in a final act of pure spite, kill his host. She focused all her will on finishing what she had begun.

In front of her Klorel screamed one final time then great glowing cracks rippled across his mental avatar. Then with a blast of noxious, artic cold air he exploded. Simultaneously the shackles holding Skaara to the glowing wall shattered and the world around them began to morph and change. The stone walls and columns melting away reforming into canvas walls as rough but functional furnishings appeared. The glow faded revealing that they were now standing inside some kind of tent.

Ariel smiled at a shocked but at the same time ecstatic looking Skaara before the tent and the human before her faded away into darkness. For a moment all she saw was the darkness then with a breath-taking suddenness the bridge of the _Pioneer_ reappeared around her. Weaknesses from the exertion of the psionic battle with the alien parasite washed over her and she stumbled and would have collapsed to her knees if a pair of arms hadn't caught her…

…from a distance she faintly heard Scott and other's voices but she couldn't hear what they were saying as the voices seemed to be coming from so far away; the exhaustion from the strain of the psionic battle on top of having teleported so often in such a short period of time became too much. Darkness enveloped her and she knew no more.

* * *

Scott Bernard was out of his seat and moving to Ariel's side with a speed that seemed almost superhuman to the rest of people on the bridge. He reached his girlfriend's side just as Sera gently lowered her to the deck, a look of mixed surprise, awe and concern on her face. Unlike everyone else on the bridge she'd known, or rather sensed, what Ariel was doing when she'd put her hand on the back of the ornately dressed young man's neck and started glowing gold. She'd sensed the foul creature inside the human die, before the young man slumped forward, and knew Ariel had killed it in a psychic battle – a kind of combat she herself wouldn't dare to engage in but then again Ariel's evolved abilities seemed to be a bit more advanced than hers were, while she could teleport she couldn't assume a full Regis-like quasi-energy state like Ariel could and didn't have her mental powers.

It was something she'd long since come to terms with as she knew why it was that way. Unlike her and Corg, Ariel hadn't started out her life as a lower stage Invid. She was unique in that she'd been literally crafted to be a stage-five Invid from the very beginning by Mother Regis, which somehow translated into her having more access to the evolved abilities of their kind than anyone other than the Regis herself. She could only hope that one day her own powers would be half as strong or as versatile as Ariel's were.

"She'll be fine," she said reassuringly to Scott as the human squatted down looking more than a little alarmed at Ariel's sudden collapse. She could see Rand and Rook giving Ariel equally concerned looks. "She's just exhausted herself that's all," she continued "once she's had a chance to rest she'll be fine."

"What was she doing to do that," Rand asked looking worriedly between the unconscious Ariel and Scott hoping that Sera was right and that Ariel would be alright. As he didn't want to think what it would do to Scott if she wasn't as he'd seen Scott Bernard before when he'd seemingly lost all hope, when they'd found the wreckage of Point K after expeditionary forces gathering at that forward base had been wiped out to a man by the Invid, how he'd seemingly gone catatonic on them for a while becoming completely unable to think or function. He didn't want to see that again if possible as it had taken Ariel – or Marlene as they'd called her then as neither they nor Ariel had known either her true name or nature as a human-form Invid – being in danger to jolt him out of it, and proceed to kick some major Invid butt, last time.

"She psionically attacked the alien life form controlling that young man," Sera replied gesturing to the man who'd called himself Klorel, who was once more slumped over unconscious, letting the awe she felt at her sisters accomplishment enter her voice. "She destroyed it, but in so doing exhausted herself. After some rest she'll be fine."

"Controlling," Lisa repeated, "you mean that arrogant thing that called itself Klorel was some sort of sentient parasite?"

"That I am, Admiral Hayes," Sera confirmed.

"Creepy," Max commented.

"Agreed," Rick replied. "Still we need to take them all down to sickbay."

"I can't teleport us all," Sera felt compelled to point out before any of the rest of the people on the bridge could suggest that she do so, "not on my own. Only Ariel or Mother Regis have the level of power needed for solo teleportation bubbles that large."

Lisa frowned and started to open her mouth to say they do it the old fashioned way, with wheelchairs or some of the self-propelling stretchers that were one of the medical applications of basic robotechnology, but before any sound could emerge from her mouth a wave of dizziness and disorientation raced through her head. _What the-?_ she had just enough time to think before a white light enveloped her and the world faded away into darkness.

* * *

**Somewhere Outside Space-Time**

**That Same Time**

Janus chuckled as he both sensed and saw the enchantment he'd empowered being broken. Though his viewing pool he observed Rupert Giles, accompanied by two others he recognised as Jana Kalderesh and the ensouled vampire who called himself Angel instead of using his old human name of Liam O'Connell, hurl the bust Ethan had used as an anchor for the spell to the floor shattering it into fragments. As the wave of arcane energy spread out reverting most of those affected by the spell to their normal selves he decided one final tweak was needed to ensure a better future than one those fools who called themselves the Powers That Be had planned was needed.

Reaching out with his power he subtly altered the wave as it spread beyond the Earth's atmosphere and made contact with the SDF-3. Instead of immediately returning the people aboard the recreated ship to their normal selves his altered wave ensured that while their original personalities returned they all retained the knowledge, experience, skills and in three cases the biology, of the people they had dressed as. After all it wouldn't do them, SG-1 and Earth in general any good if they didn't know how to operate, maintain and duplicate the ships technologies. Ensuring the memories and so on remained and wouldn't fade away, as they otherwise would have done as the Powers suppressed all bar what they wanted or needed them to know in order to serve their overly complex, convoluted and downright nonsensical plans, handily accomplished that.

As the wave passed he withdrew, a profound satisfaction growing in his mind as he already sensed the changes taking place on the Tau lines forging a variety of new possible futures. Some were good and some were bad, such was the nature of things - the Powers were right about one thing their always had to be a balance but not between good and evil, as they believed, but between chaos and order as too much of either was harmful - but all were better outcomes than what the Powers had planned before. _Mission accomplished,_ he thought with a smirk worthy of a certain champion of his appearing on his faces.

His smirk changing into a smile he, metaphorically speaking, sat back to watch what happened next. Despite his nature as a temporal god even he couldn't know the immediate future, as it was the free will of mortals and the choices that allowed that determined precise outcomes, only get a sense of where things were going. While that could be frustrating at times now was not one of them. Now he looked forward to seeing what happened now, what the exact fallout of tonight's events would be. One thing he was sure about though was it was going to be both amusing and interesting.

Very interesting.

* * *

**Authors Notes: Well another chapter bites the metaphorical dust. I hope you enjoyed it though I know some of you are probably a little disappointed that there was no reaction from the SGC about the destruction of the Goa'uld ships in this chapter. That will be shown in the next chapter or so depending on how my plans for chapter seven go. Until then all thanks for reading this update.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn**

**Disclaimer: Unfortunately I still do not own these characters so please continue to keep the lawyers firmly on their leash.**

**Edit 31/01/15: I've altered the final part of the chapter as I had accidentally written myself into something of a corner with the original which was making it difficult to get started on chapter eight of this fic. So I've changed things a little bit, I strongly advise all my readers to read the new ending otherwise the new chapter when its ready will not make a huge amount of sense.**

* * *

_**Chapter Seven**_

**Stargate Command**

**A Few Minutes Earlier**

Gasps of mixed shock and awe filled the control room as the overhead monitors showed the SDF-3's main cannons fire, unleashing two coruscating beams of radiant energy whose destructive power was almost beyond comprehension. One of the two massive Goa'uld warships was hit almost immediately, the beam completely ignoring the energy shields surrounding the ship to cut into, then through the very centre of the vessel, shooting out the other side amid an explosion of debris. For a moment out of time the Goa'uld ship remained intact, great glowing rips and tears appearing in its hull, then with a breath-taking suddenness the whole thing erupted into a truly titanic explosion.

The blast was enormous, far outshining the distant light of the sun. The screens washed with heavy static and the EMP generated by the blast assaulted, and very nearly fried, the hardened electronics of the recording spy satellite. The static cleared, just in time for the watching SGC personnel to see the massive beams from the SDF-3 vanish. One of the enemy ships remained, but it was far from intact as it spun away, trailing a massive slick of debris and venting atmosphere from a truly enormous gash ripped in its hull – presumably it had managed to avoid being hit directly, hence why it hadn't been blown to irradiated dust like the other ship had, but had only been grazed by the beam. Which, in testament to the sheer power of the alien weapon, had still been more than enough to thoroughly mission kill the ship.

"Unbelievable," General Hammond breathed, awed despite himself by that display of sheer power as it was beyond anything he had ever seen in his decades of service to the United States as a member of her Air Force. Even the spectacle of seeing the Stargate open for the first time paled into insignificance in comparison. Yet at the same time he couldn't help but be concerned both for professional and private reasons.

Professionally because there was no way that the destruction of the Goa'uld warships – though something to be welcomed as it meant they were safe from orbital annihilation, at least for now – could have been missed. Both the brilliant yellow-white meters thick lances of the energy beams and the flash of the one ships detonation would have been clearly visible from the surface over much of the hemisphere. Which meant that the secret about aliens being real, and hostile to life on Earth, was well and truly out now. There couldn't really be any chance of putting that particular genie back in the bottle.

And he had to admit that part of him wondered if that was truly a bad thing.

The System Lords and their armies of fanatically loyal Jaffa were a threat to everyone, every nation on the planet not just the United States of America. While politically it would be one hell of a headache, which was why he was thankful he wouldn't be the one dealing with it, from a military standpoint having all the collective resources of the worlds armed forces to throw at the Goa'uld would make battling them a hell of a lot easier if still quite an uphill struggle given the Goa'uld had a major advantage in terms of both manpower and technology level. _Though the latter could probably be rendered moot if whoever's aboard the __Pioneer__ shares her technology with us,_ he thought, _and isn't that weird to think about. Robotechnology being a real science, a real technology and not just something from Japanese anime; powerful science and technology at that going on that very impressive fireworks display._

On a private note though he was worried for the members of his flagship team. Assuming they hadn't been captured and killed, or worse, whenever they'd gated to the Goa'uld staging area they would have likely been aboard one of those two ships. Aboard and knowing Jack trying to figure out a way of either capturing – strictly for research and reverse engineering of course, nothing whatsoever to do with the other man's child-like desire for 'big honking space guns' – or destroying them. Given what had just happened then it was very possible that all four members of SG-1 were now either dead or dying; blown to fiery dust with the first ship or suffocating as the second ship lost atmosphere through its monster of a hull breach. The fact that he didn't know there fate, and possibly might never know, was torturous in the extreme. And what made it worse was he had no way of finding out their fate either way.

A flicker of light on the screen caught his attention. _What the-?_ he thought giving the screen his full attention again, just in time to see what looked like two balls of golden light streak across the distance between the SDF-3 and the tumbling remains of the last Goa'uld ship. He wondered if the streaks were weapons fire – possibly some kind of high velocity railgun rounds – which the _Pioneer's_ crew were using to finish off the Goa'uld, but didn't want to waste the energy needed to blow the ship to bits with their standard energy weapons. The thought died when the two streaks of light disappeared through the hull of the dying warship, without causing any explosion at all or any sign that they'd even hit it. Obviously they weren't weapons but something else entirely, though what that could be he had no idea but then it had been a very long time since he'd last watched Robotech.

"Sir," Sergeant Harriman said abruptly.

"Yes," George asked looking at the long suffering master sergeant who oversaw the operation of the gate itself.

"The President is on the line for you, sir," Walter replied, before grimacing. "Also Lieutenant Colonel Samuels is waiting in your office for you."

George resisted, just, the impulse to groan in annoyance at that particular bit of news. He hadn't yet forgiven his former second in command, who'd left for a post at the Pentagon shortly after the SGC was brought back online in the wake of Apophis's raid, for siding with Senator Kinsey when the good Senator had come to the base to review the program. Review and ultimately decide that the gate was both too big a risk, and not producing anything to justify its continued use and order there shutdown. While Bert Samuels had never made a secret of the fact that he thought the gate was dangerous and should be sealed immediately, the fact that he'd – by siding with Kinsey – to all intents and purposes spat on all the hard work and sacrifices the SG teams had made over the last year had been an unforgiveable betrayal as far as he – and everyone else assigned to the SGC – was concerned. Thus he wasn't pleased to hear that the man had arrived here at this time as he didn't doubt that Kinsey – or one of the man's stooges at the Pentagon – were behind it.

"Understood," he said at last resigned to dealing with Samuels as well as President Clinton who he knew wasn't a fool and would be well aware that what had happened had changed the world. As well as making keeping their little secret to all intents and purposes impossible. "I'll take the call in my office."

"Yes, Sir," Walter acknowledged.

With a silent sigh of resignation George left the control room, climbing the stairs to the level above which was dominated by the briefing room and his own office. Standing outside his office, and looking more than a little gobsmacked about something, was Samuels looking resplendent in his dress blues. It was obvious by looking at him that Samuels mind was elsewhere and following his gaze George notice it was focused on one of the monitors sometimes used in briefings. A monitor that was currently showing the same satellite feed that he himself had been watching a few moments earlier.

"Colonel Samuels," he said in greeting and inwardly smirked when the younger man visibly jumped with surprise. "Are you alright?"

"General Hammond. I'm fine sir," Samuels replied visibly trying to pull himself together.

"Is there a problem, Colonel?" George asked keeping his features composed with difficulty as part of him wanted to make a truly Jack O'Neill worthy smirk at seeing the normally very arrogant and cocky Samuels looking so shell shocked.

"No… no problem," Samuels replied, "it's just I can't believe that's," he gestured at the monitor and the image of the SDF-3 being displayed on the screen, "real."

"You and me both, Colonel," George admitted, "after all it's not every day that a fictional ship from Japanese animation is shown to be real, and not only real but for said ship to save us from a potentially devastating Goa'uld attack."

"Indeed sir," Samuels agreed. _We would have beaten the Goa'uld ourselves if they, whoever they are, hadn't intervened,_ he thought, _our new Goa'uld Buster missiles would have been more than capable of shooting those warships out of the sky, despite their shields. And maybe then we'd have had a chance of keeping the secret of the gate under wraps. Even if it did mean cancelling the shutdown order on the SGC in order to continue the war, and get some new tech and weapons for ourselves. But no this happened… ugh glad I don't have to deal with the political fallout._ He inwardly smirked as he imagined Senator Kinsey's reaction to all this, despite what some people in the Pentagon – and no doubt here at the SGC – believed he actually didn't much care for the slimy politician. He'd just been a means to an end.

"Come along, Colonel. The President is waiting to speak with me, we can both guess what about."

"Indeed we can, sir."

Without further ado George walked past the younger Air Force officer and made his way into his office, footsteps behind him letting him know the other man was following. Within moments George was around the far side of his desk before picking up the constantly ringing red phone before bringing it to his ear.

"Yes Mr President?"

* * *

**Bridge**

**SDF-3 Pioneer**

**That Same Time**

Xander Harris blinked and looked around in confusion as, with a suddenness that was truly breath-taking, he suddenly found herself back into control of his body. _What! What happened?_ he thought, before shivering as the memories played before his eyes. Being down in Sunnydale acting as escort for an increasing sugar high bunch of rug rats, feeling an odd tingle as something invisible but powerful washed over him, suddenly ceasing to be Xander Harris but instead becoming Rick Hunter. And everything that had happened since then.

He could only think of one explanation for what had happened. Magic. _Ugh I hate magic,_ he thought before mentally shaking himself and paid attention to his surroundings. Somehow he wasn't surprised to find himself sitting at a computer station on the bridge of a spaceship that both sounded and felt real… completely, totally and somewhat frighteningly real. What was shocking was that he understood everything the console screens were telling him, all the complex graphics and data being displayed in a format that was completely different to the Windows format he was used to made perfect sense to him. Seemingly on autopilot he found his hands dancing across the console, checking to make sure the ships reflex cannons had fully secured from the firing sequence, checking to make sure the excesses charges absorbed by the omni-directional barriers capacitors were being dissipated properly by the automatic systems, deactivating the pinpoint barriers and powering down the rest of the ships numerous weapons systems now that the danger appeared to have past.

"Harris what the hell?" a male voice said from somewhere off to the right of him, a voice that touched the echo left in him by the hyena possession last year. Finishing what he was doing, somehow knowing it was important that he not leave it unfinished, Xander turned in the direction the voice had come from.

To see Tor Hauer looking back at him, face a mask of bafflement and confusion. It wasn't quite the face he remembered, Tor's features had somehow changed becoming more chiselled, more classically handsome than before. The formerly blond member of the Pack was pulling at his hair frantically, hair that had changed both in colour and length from the short blond spikes he'd favoured since junior high. His hair instead was now long, tied back in a ponytail with a single quiff hanging down on his forehead. It was also a dark blue in colour. With a shocked jolt he realised that it had previously been a wig that the other teen had been wearing to appear more like Scott Bernard, but which had now become his real hair.

Without even thinking about it his own hand shot up. To find that his own wig had become real hair as well. _Great,_ he thought with a mental sigh, _I wonder if there have been any other permanent changes due to whatever spell was cast on us. And if I ever find out who cast it I'm going to shove a battloids gun pod up where the sun doesn't shine and pull the trigger._

"My guess is we were the victims of some kind of spell," he answered at last.

Tor groaned at that, recalling his last experience with magic. Being possessed by a primal hyena spirit, eating the football team's mascot raw and then killing and eating Principal Flutie, all the result of getting caught up in someone else's primal magic spell, was not something you forgot. Much as he wished he could forget it as he could do without those nightmares thank you very much, nightmares that had seen his friend Kyle descend into drugs and alcoholism in an attempt to escape them and the emotions that came with them, especially the guilt. Not that he had it had simply resulted in his parents removing him from school and chucking him into an expensive detox programme somewhere in Oregon – which from what he'd heard wasn't going well. Yet here he was again, caught up in a spell. Though at least this time he hadn't been turned into a hyena in human form, instead turned into a REF soldier with memories of growing up aboard a gigantic colony ship orbiting Tirol, attending the Robotech Academy on said planet and eventually coming to Earth with the goal of booting some Invid squatters off his ancestral homeworld.

"Great," he muttered, before his eyes widened as he remembered persuading Heidi to dress up in a Robotech costume as well as him. Looking around he saw her slumped at his feet unconscious but breathing. "Heidi," he said aloud in alarm, reaching out to feel for a pulse. There was one but it felt strange, not like the normal pulsing rhythm of a human heartbeat more like a continuous rushing of a fluid. She felt warmer than normal and to that little bit of the hyena that had stayed in him she felt really different, didn't feel like she was human anymore.

Blue eyes widened as a horrible thought occurred to him. Heidi had dressed up as Marlene/Ariel a human-form Invid. Was she still an Invid? Was that why she didn't exactly feel like a human anymore to the remains of the animal within him? _Oh God I hope not,_ he thought, _how are we going to deal with it if she is still an Invid? What if the government find out! They'll take her away and do all sorts of nasty experiments to her. Even discounting that how will we both cope with it…._

A hand abruptly landing on the armour encasing his shoulder, armour that from the clang it made was definitely still a titanium nanolaminate-ceramiplast alloy instead of the moulded plastic it had been when he'd bought the costume from Ethan's, brought him out of his increasingly frenzied thoughts. He looked up to find himself looking into Xander's face, the other man – as Xander looked to have been somehow aged to look to be in his mid to late twenties – looking as concerned as he was feeling but for him as well as Heidi. He almost reached up to brush the hand away, after the possession ended Harris hadn't exactly spent much time with him or the others – which now he thought about it was probably Willow and Buffy's doing – who'd been affected by the primal spell. But he didn't as the part of him that still thought of Xander Harris as Alpha, as both leader and a source of comfort and safety, stopped him, instead he rested he put one of his own hands on Harris' accepting the offer of silent support feeling a strange sense of peace in doing so along with a sense that whatever happened it would be alright in the end.

For his part Xander blinked as he offered support and comfort to Tor, who he could tell was deeply worried and troubled by what had likely happened to Heidi Barrie as a result of whatever spell had overtaken them all. It didn't show on his face but he just _knew_ that he was and before he'd even realised it he'd stood up, crossed the bridge and put a hand on the other teen – no man as Tor didn't exactly look like a teenager anymore but more like someone in his early to mid-twenties – armour-encased shoulder. He hadn't thought about doing it he'd just done it and feeling Tor put his own hand on his in response he found it felt right. _Guess there is still some of the hyena left in him as well as it is in me,_ he thought, _damn I should have talked to them instead of trying to pretend I didn't remember anything for the sake of Buffy and Willow. Maybe we would have been able to help each other through what happened then. Screw it whatever Buffy and Willow say I'm going to be there for Tor, Heidi and Rhonda from now on as I should have been all along. Maybe if I had been Kyle wouldn't have fallen into alcohol and drugs after the possession. I've been a bad Alpha for too long, time to correct that._

A soft groan from the direction of the command chair caught his attention and both of them turned to look. Just in time to see Buffy open her eyes, blink in confusion before shooting up to her feet with Slayer enhanced speed eyes scanning for threats in the same way they did when hunting vampires down in one of the many graveyards there were in Sunnydale. It was obvious that Buffy had been changed in the same way they had, she was a good six or seven inches taller than before and like them appeared to have been aged till she appeared to be in her twenties her physique had also changed while as lithe as ever she'd lost the small build that had led to so many vampires and demons underestimating her capabilities as a Slayer – which was usually the last mistake said vamp or demon ever made before getting dusted, vanquished or otherwise cut to ribbons by the pissed off Slayer – instead having gained the more robust frame of Lisa Hayes.

"Xander," Buffy said relaxing as she realised there was no threat present here, wherever here was, before turning her attention to her best male friend… and frowning. "What the hell has happened to you?" she asked eyeing him noticing how not only had he somehow aged almost a decade but – from the way he was filling out the uniform – had put on quite a lot of muscle as well. She felt her old attraction to him, which she'd put aside in favour of Angel as Willow wanted Xander though never seemed to be able to muster the courage to tell him let alone ask him out, stir and be reinforced by something within her.

"Same thing that's happened to you, Buff," Xander replied prompting Buffy to look down and emit a cry of surprise before repeatedly feeling at herself to confirm what she saw was real.

"What, what's happened?" she asked.

"Best guess a spell or some type," Xander answered glancing at the people sprawled out on the floor. He remember Ariel and Sera – who he now recognised as Heidi Barrie and Gwen Ditchik, one of Cordelia's little gaggle of sycophants, respectively – teleporting over to the one alien ship that had survived their reflex cannon attack and rescuing them, remembered Ariel/Heidi psionically attacking and killing the parasitic alien life form controlling the Egyptian-looking boy in ornate robes. _What are we going to do about them,_ he thought.

Buffy groaned at his answer. "Great and Giles said Halloween is supposed to be a dead for the undead and other supernatural nastiness," she moaned aloud. She almost wanted to rage at what had happened but found she couldn't, something within her that felt like an echo of Lisa was saying she had far more important things to do now.

A few more groans around the bridge caught the attention of the three of them. Looking around they saw that the rest of those affected by the spell were recovering – well with the exception of Heidi and Gwen who remained unconscious as their minds adapted to being in bodies that in everything but appearance weren't even remotely human – opening eyes and looking around in shock and confusion.

Typically Willow, still sitting at the communications station, started babbling at such a high speed that not even Xander – who could normally understand most patented Willow-babble – could understand what she was saying. Buffy immediately moved over to her best female friend and put a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. "Breath, Willow," Buffy said with Slayer firmness. "You're not going to do yourself much good if you pass out from oxygen deprivation." _I can't believe I just said that,_ she thought in shock, _since when do I use terms like oxygen deprivation? Gah this bit of Lisa left inside me by whatever spell was cast on us is going to take some getting used to. Which reminds me when I find however cast this spell I'm so going to slay them._

Willow stopped babbling, closed her eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths to calm and settle herself unknowingly tapping into something Minmei had learned to do before going on stage to perform, before opening her eyes. "Buffy what happened," she asked confused as she remembered turning into Minmei, meeting up with Xander/Rick who'd used a laser to save her from a werewolf of all things, coming up to this ship and everything that had happened since then.

"I would like to know that as well," Larry Blaisdell said moving away from the console where he remembered working. Being somehow turned into Roy Fokker had been a downright freaky experience even by the weird standards of Sunnydale High.

"Obviously a spell of some sort," Amy replied, "though I'm not sure what kind of spell could have such an effect and create this ship out of nothing. It would have to be seriously powerful though."

"Magic! Yeah right pull the other one, Amy," Larry answered.

"How else do you explain it then," Buffy asked, "magic's real."

"And if you want proof," Amy added holding up a hand and muttering a spell under her breath, she immediately felt the magic flow through her though it felt different to before, flowing more easily for some reason. With a flash a whirling ball of white flame-like energy appeared hovering a centimetre above the surface of her palm.

"You know magic too?" Jonathan Levinson asked gaping at Amy before she extinguished the fireball, he knew it was her from her voice as she didn't quite look the same anymore.

"You know magic, Jono," Xander asked looking at the geek he, Willow and Jesse had used to sometimes hang around with before Buffy had come to Sunnydale and Jesse got turned.

"A little. Small illusions mostly," Jonathan answered before frowning at Xander. "Why aren't you freaking out about this, Xander?"

"Believe me part of me wants to," Xander admitted, "but I've known magic is real for a while now. Ever since just after the Buffster here," he gestured to Buffy, "came to town." _And this is not the first time I've been caught in a spell,_ he thought with a glance at Tor and the still unconscious Heidi. _I hope she's going to be alright especially if she's still an Invid._

"Is magic how you were able to stop me earlier today," Larry asked addressing Buffy as he recalled her stopping him picking on Harris.

"Not quite but close," Buffy replied, before sighing. "Okay cards on the table here people we've all obviously gotten caught up in somebody else's spell – and believe me I'll slay whoever's behind it when I find them – and we're now on a previously fictional warship orbiting Earth. We also just destroyed two hostile alien warships, we need each other if we're to survive now."

"Slay," Jonathan muttered before his now blue eyes widened as he recalled something he'd read in one of the occult books that had appeared in the library of Sunnydale High when Rupert Giles had taken over as school librarian. "Oh my God, you're the Slayer."

"You know about the Slayer," Buffy asked.

"Ugh what's a Slayer," Scott Hope asked from just behind Larry, his voice still recognisable though he'd seemingly picked up a strong German accent from somewhere.

"There's a whole spiel about it that's not important now," Buffy replied, the part of her that was still Lisa Hayes telling her to focus more on what was important in the here and now. "Suffice to say that as a result of being the Slayer I'm stronger than your average bear. But as I said that's not important now. What we need to decide is a) what we're going to do with them," she gestured over her shoulder at the four people in military black clothes sprawled out of the deck, "and b) what do we do about this situation we're in. I assume everyone remembers what happened last night."

There were nods of affirmation from all round. "Okay," Buffy said with a sigh before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. _Damn this is so wiggy and look at me taking charge like this,_ she thought, _huh while it might be annoying in some ways I think I'm going to like all this stuff left in my head._

"First I suggest we get this lot to sickbay and rig them up to ventilators as they all probably inhaled quite a bit of toxic smoke before Ariel and Sera… I mean Heidi and Gwen got them off that second warship," Xander suggested.

"We prevented an invasion… cool," Jonathan said grinning, "oh man Andrew and Warren are going to be so jealous."

"I don't think we can really go back to Sunnydale High, Jono," Xander pointed out, "I mean we hardly look like we all did just this afternoon."

Jono blinked and looked down. Immediately noticing that in addition to being a few inches taller than he'd been earlier he'd put on quite a bit of muscle that filled out the uniform he was wearing quite well. Thinking about it he guessed his own face will have changed a bit as well, just like how Xander while still clearly Xander looked a bit more like Rick and how from the look of her Willow's skin had tanned till it looked Asian. "Point," he agreed looking up.

Before anyone else could speak a sharp bleeping alert sounded throughout the bridge. "What's that," Buffy asked.

Larry turned around and glanced back at the console he'd previously been sitting at, which was where the noise seemed to be coming from. A few knowledgeable taps of the controls silenced the alert and provided a reason for it having sounded in the first place. "A small ships just leaving the wreckage of the second warship," he said sounding both surprised by the fact that he could read and operate the console and the fact that someone else had apparently survived long enough on the wreck of the second alien warship to reach a smaller craft. _Guess there is more than a bit of Roy left in me,_ he thought. "The craft is moving away from us and the wreck at about twenty percent of light speed, wait reading a power surge. There's some kind of hyperspatial vortex opening in front of the craft, its entering, it's gone. The vortex is closing."

"Can you tell what it was?" Buffy asked.

"I'm not sure the design was similar to the squadron of alien attack ships that bombed us before the capital ships arrived. Whatever it was it didn't seem to be armed. It could be the alien equivalent of a Star Goose just capable of interstellar travel."

"Whatever it was its concerning that it got away," Xander pointed out, "now whoever those warships belonged to will know about us… and how easily we destroyed them."

Silence greeted that response, with everyone exchanging looks of mutual concern. They all knew that he was right and now the aliens would know just what had thwarted their attempted attack on Earth. Though by the standards in all their memories just two warships was a truly pathetic attack/invasion force when compared to the dozens, hundreds and thousands of capital ships and mecha that made up the attack groups favoured by the Robotech races. Still none of them doubted that those two ships, sizeable even by Robotech standards, would have easily been able to wreck untold levels of destruction on Earth if they, or rather the people they'd been briefly transformed into, hadn't stopped them.

"So now what," Larry asked breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen upon the bridge. None of them knew how to answer that particular question. After all what did you do if you found yourself on the bridge of a gigantic warship that until a few hours ago existed only on a tape buried in the vault at Harmony Gold? Especially after the fictional characters that you'd been briefly transformed into by some magic spell prevented a real life _alien invasion_ of Earth? And to top it all off didn't exactly look the way you did just a few short hours ago?

"Now I think we have some decisions to make," Xander answered at last, "as I think it's obvious to all that whatever else we decide to do we simply can't go back to the way things were before. But first we should wait for Heidi and Gwen to wake up, they need to be involved in this to." _Especially as neither feels human anymore,_ he thought, as with Tor the remnant of the Hyena inside of him let him know that neither girl was in anyway human anymore but were now Invid.

One by one everyone on the bridge nodded in agreement. However before anyone could speak a soft groan from the back of the bridge caught everyone's attention, turning in the direction the sound had come from they could see one of the black clad figures was beginning to stir. "One of our guests is regaining consciousness," Tor commented needlessly, hand drifting towards his holstered H-90 Gallant just in case the stirring individual proved hostile to them.

Xander smiled slightly in approval though he kept his gaze firmly focused on the stirring man, it was the grey haired one who looked to be roughly the same age as Giles. _Whatever else we decide to do we're really going to have to have a word with Giles about all this,_ he thought, _find out who exactly did this to us and why they didn't get the memo that Halloween is supposed to be a quiet on the supernatural nasty's front. _

He was brought out of his thoughts as the figure groaned again before cool grey eyes flickered open and the man groaned more loudly, snapping them shut again, and holding a hand to his forehead. "Oh will someone tell the guy with the jackhammer to lay off," the stranger moaned, prompting a round of amused chuckles and looks from all of them.

The sound of muted chuckles penetrating the mental haze of pain enveloping the older man prompting both the hand to drop to his side and for his eyes to shoot open again. After blinking frantically for a few moments the stranger carefully studied them. _He's sizing us up,_ Xander thought as he watched the other man notice how they were all armed.

"Howdy campers," the man said at last. "What's hanging?"

* * *

**Authors Note: I realise Buffy and co might be acting a bit out of character for them but please bare in mind that their personalities have been merged with echoes of the personalities of the people they were transformed into by Ethan's spell as well as inheriting their memories, knowledge and skills.**


End file.
